


Bits and Pieces

by rain_sleet_snow



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Old Kingdom - Garth Nix, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aliens, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Coda, Crossover, Established Relationship, F/F, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Jedi, M/M, Multi, Rey Organa, Rey Skywalker, Single Parents, Space Granddads, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-01-07 07:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 19,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12228693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Snippets and outtakes, written to request or found down the back of the hard drive. Multifandom (or will be) but characters are noted in the chapter headings.Latest: Rogue One in the Old Kingdom. Lord Bail Organa rides to Belisaere with a young Cassian Andor in tow.





	1. Etiquette (Jyn/Cassian)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [This Crude Matter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12454293) by [rain_sleet_snow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow). 
  * Inspired by [because I don't know how to love any other way](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9369995) by [rain_sleet_snow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow). 



Jyn was standing in the grand central room of the Abhorsen’s suite, waiting for Bodhi to reappear, when she heard the knock on the door. She startled, and almost dropped the book she had picked up; convinced by the look Bodhi had thrown at the door of the master bedroom that he hadn’t spent all his time at the Clayr’s Glacier in the Lower Refectory, she had guessed she would be waiting a while.

Jyn laid the book down and went to the door, expecting to see a Daughter of the Clayr. When she recognised Captain Andor, she almost recoiled.

Captain Andor blinked and stared, apparently equally bowled over, although Jyn had no idea why: he must have expected to find her here. He, too, had washed and changed his clothes, although Jyn doubted he had bathed in an oversized black marble tub, and he wore a uniform rather than anything that might have revealed his own taste: understated olive wool trimmed with dark green, rank marks stitched into the fabric above the Regent’s dark blue badge.

Years of training in Ancelstierran good manners battled with a strong feeling that the safest thing to do would be to slam the door on him; with solid wood between them, he couldn’t keep looking at her in that disconcertingly stunned fashion.

“Captain Andor,” she said, one hand tight on the door’s edge. “What an unexpected… surprise.”

There was a good reason Jyn had nearly failed every practical etiquette exam Miss Prionte had ever set her. Jyn winced at her own awkwardness, but Captain Andor didn’t seem to have noticed. He didn’t look as if he disapproved, either.

“Abhorsen-in-Waiting. I hope I’m not disturbing you; the Regent asked me to bring you a message.”

“You’re not,” Jyn said, and then cleared her throat and stepped out of the way of the door. Her skirts rustled as she did so, grey wool and red silk swaying with her movement in a way her school uniform never had done. “Please. Come in.”

 _You are mad, Jyn Erso_ , she thought, watching Captain Andor’s eyes flash wide with shock. _You are stark raving mad._

_You don’t even like him._

“Thank you,” Captain Andor said, very politely, and stepped over the threshold. Jyn saw him glance around the room, presumably noting the ostentation of most of the decoration, and the omnipresent blue and silver keys. “I hope you find yourself comfortable here.”

“It’s certainly very luxurious,” Jyn said dryly, and watched as a corner of his mouth twitched with something that might have been amusement.

He’d shaved. She wasn’t sure why she cared.

He handed her a small envelope: paper, well-folded, sealed with dark blue wax. Jyn took it from him, her thumb rubbing over the seal, but did not move to open it.

“I hope you’re comfortable, too,” she said at last. She probably ought to offer him a seat, but he was looking at her, and she felt like she was rooted to the ground. Jyn Erso, you’re being an idiot.

“Very,” he said, and really did smile: only a polite smile, though, and Jyn was obscurely disappointed. “The Daughters of the Clayr are generous hosts.”

Jyn nodded, turning the small paper packet over and over in her hands. “Have you visited before?”

“Not often.” Captain Andor had a very odd expression on his face - something bright but confused trying to escape from behind a neutral mask. Jyn kept catching his eye and finding herself glancing away for no reason. “Have you?”

“Not that I remember.” Jyn smoothed a hand over the material of her dress where it rested over one thigh, trying not to fidget more obviously. The silhouette was simple, but the fabric itself wrapped around her in a sort of spiral, the different colours of silk stitched together from low round neckline to her hips, where the dress flared out to the floor in a loose fan of alternating grey and red layers. It was the least blue thing in the entire suite, so far as Jyn could tell, and the silver keys were restricted to a delicate trim around the neckline and the narrow cuffs. Even the belt - soft leather with a pair of silver cat’s heads at each end, and without a buckle of any sort, so that Jyn had resorted to a rough knot - was red, not blue.

Captain Andor’s eyes had apparently automatically followed her hand. Jyn blinked at him, and saw his eyes shoot back to her face, a slight but perceptible blush spreading over his cheeks. Feeling herself redden in response, although there was no good reason why, she shook her head sharply before he could say anything. Her hair, still drying, whispered across her shoulders.

“You look - well,” he said, stumbling over his words. “The last few days have been very - must have been very…”

“Trying,” Jyn supplied weakly. “Yes.” She pressed her lips together. “You also seem - I mean - I would have thought you would be exhausted after -”

“No,” Captain Andor said. “I assure you.”

There was an awkward silence. Jyn wished desperately that Bodhi would come along and break it, but - at the same time - she hated the very idea.

“I suppose,” Captain Andor rallied, “the belt is not the sort they have in Ancelstierre.”

He looked appalled at himself. Jyn felt her mouth drop open.

“No?” she said, and then added hesitantly, “all the belts I’ve seen in Ancelstierre have… buckles… and this one… doesn’t.”

They stared at each other, apparently mutually stumped. Captain Andor was slowly turning terracotta-coloured.

“It’s an old-fashioned style,” he said, hurriedly, seeming to relax a little as he explained. “Formal. The sendings must have thought you were dining with the Regent.”

“How do you know all this?” Jyn asked, wondering if this counted as polite conversation.

“Observation,” he said. “You see that type of belt often enough, in certain upper-class parts of Belisaere. It’s a Court style.”

Jyn looked down at her own waist, and the rough, lumpen knot she had managed. “Then I take it it’s not meant to look like that.”

He almost laughed. “No. Not at all. Let me,” he said, and his hands were on her waist, his quick fingers loosening the belt’s knot, before either of them had realised what was happening or how close he was.

Jyn’s heart was beating fit to burst straight out of her chest. Her cheeks felt hot, and the skin under Captain Andor’s hands prickled, even through the layers of linen shift and underwear and dress.

Captain Andor had gone very red indeed, and ducked his head so she couldn’t see his face, but his hands were slow and sure and very, very careful not to touch her body as he pulled the knot free, centred the belt, and wrapped each end loosely one over the other so that the silver decorations fell straight down her thighs.

“Not very practical,” Jyn said. Her skin was still prickling, and when Captain Andor finally met her eyes the feeling spread from the tiny spot where he had touched her to every inch of skin she had. “That’s not going to hold anything up.”

“It’s not supposed to,” Captain Andor said. “It’s meant to look pretty.” He cleared his throat, looking wretchedly embarrassed but determined. “It suits you.”

Jyn, struck speechless, dropped the envelope he had given her less than five minutes ago - which she had forgotten about entirely. “Oh,” she said stupidly, and stared as he crouched down immediately to pick it up. Even the back of his neck had reddened, and the shells of his ears. “Thank you,” she added, as he handed it back to her.

“I should be going,” Captain Andor said, with unflattering speed. “Have a - pleasant evening.”

“Thank you,” Jyn said. “I wish you the same.”

 _Sleep well_ , she almost said. But he bowed and left and closed the door behind him before she could do anything half so stupid.

 


	2. Ships and Shoes and Sealing-Wax (Rey & Finn, Star Wars)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years after the events on Starkiller Base, a communications manager with a project in mind meets his match.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A ficlet set in the future of a story yet to be published, _This Crude Matter_ , also known as Space Granddads to the lovely people following my tumblr.

Connix had told him it was a bad idea, and at first he thought he understood why. A princess Jedi, raised by heroes of the Rebellion, trained by the mysterious, long-lost hero she had gone on a quest to find; no wonder if she had bigger things to think about than the naming of a ship, no wonder if she wouldn't fit him into her schedule. But he still thought it was a good idea, and he still tried.

It took months to track her down. She was here and then she was gone. Those who knew where to find her were not helpful; he threatened Dameron with another stint on the propaganda posters but the man still wouldn't say a thing, the defector hero who went everywhere with her was equally difficult to locate, and even he drew the line at pestering the General for news of her daughter, or the Grand Master for the location of his niece.

The day the _Falcon_ crash-landed several miles from the nearest base, he took his chance and borrowed a speeder to get out there.

"This is still a bad idea!" Connix shouted at him, as he sped off. He ignored her.

It was the defector - Finn, that was his name; he ought to know that, had written enough propaganda pieces about the man - who spotted him first.

"Aww hell," said Finn. "Rey. Incoming!"

The princess Jedi appeared from nowhere with a lit lightsabre in one hand and a blaster in the other.

"Not that kind of incoming!" Finn yelped.

"Oh." The princess Jedi looked at him like he was a curiosity. "Right." She turned off her lightsabre, and scratched her scalp with the freed hand. "What do you want?"

"Your Highness," he said.

The princess pointed the unlit lightsabre at him. "Stop right there."

"Jedi Organa -"

The princess heaved a sigh.

He got it out all in a rush. "I came to ask if you would mind if we named a ship after you. The _Princess Breha_. Or the _Princess Rey_ , if you prefer..."

That got him her full attention, and also a look of absolute horror. "Yes. I - yes, I would definitely mind, no, don't do that."

Finn had covered his face with both hands.

"Call it..." The princess spun her blaster on her finger. "Call it Tuanul."

"What?"

"Tuanul. T U A N U L. Got it? Yep. Good. Have a nice trip back."

The princess Jedi disappeared back into the _Falcon_.

Finn clapped him on the back. "Sorry. You're not getting anything other than that."

"What's Tuanul?" he asked Finn, deeply puzzled, and seriously deflated.

Finn's eyes were sad. "Home," he said, and left it at that.

Connix had been right. It was a bad idea.

He still called the ship _Tuanul_ , and Princess Breha didn't just agree to launch it.

She _offered_.


	3. Negative Space (Beru/Owen/Obi-Wan)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes Han Solo thinks he understands his aunt-in-law. Other times he remembers it was Beru who taught Luke to use every tool to hand.
> 
> ***
> 
> Written for Celeste, because I am a terrible human being who likes making her betas cry.

Every now and then, people were led to complain that it was inappropriate for the Junior Minister of Finance to live with the Senator for Chandrila, who was herself the acknowledged heir to Chancellor Mothma. Words like ‘nepotism’ got used on a semi-regular basis. Occasionally, someone even suggested that Beru Whitesun used her position to enrich her extended family by helping her nephew-in-law and Baron Calrissian carry out insider trading.

“Ridiculous,” Beru said to Han, loading him down with a stack of data pads and a briefcase full of confidential material that she should have foisted on her aide (but the girl never saw her family and the window for a holocall with Ryloth was so thin.) “I don’t give you tips on anything other than parenting. You rise or fall on your own business sense.”

“Yes ma’am,” Han said, resting his chin on top of the stack so he could see well enough to navigate and avoid dropping anything. He hesitated, and it might have been just that the corridor was so crowded, or it might not. “I thought your response was… it was clever.”

Beru had stood on the Senate floor and said that she counted herself fortunate to reside with her remaining family.

“Hmm,” Beru said.

As they walked through the Hall of the Remembered, past names and images (Bail Organa, Breha Organa, Padmé Amidala), the holocameras from the press corps whirred. Han and Beru were sufficiently accustomed to this that they didn’t break stride or look at them (Ahsoka Tano, Anakin Skywalker, Cham Syndulla).

At the end of the Hall a journalist called “Madam Lars!” and Beru’s feet halted and caught. She turned, and the holographer caught her situated perfectly between the two last remaining portraits, black and white, three quarter profile, turned confidently towards each other (Obi-Wan ‘Ben’ Kenobi, Owen Lars).

“You did that on purpose,” Han said, when it was the second image on the evening news.

“He startled me,” Beru said.

It wasn’t an answer.


	4. Alanna the Jedi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alanna and Thom of Trebond are taken to the Temple at four years old, about twenty years before the fall of the Republic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for dovebalitang and lisafer, who know how to get me where the plotbunnies bite.

 

  * Alanna and Thom of Trebond arrive at the Temple in Coruscant under the aegis of Baird Queenscove, senior medical professor and lecturer to the Jedi MedCorps, who typically has absolutely fuck-all to do with Jedi Search but who found himself on Trebond, on the continent that gave the planet its name, at the capital city of the man who rules over most of that continent. He was trying to meet up with an old classmate from medical school, only 
    1. She was dead
    2. She had twins before she died
    3. Her husband appears to be a complete dick
    4. The twins are four years old and have not had any immunisations.
  * Baird does not freak out or yell, despite grievous temptation.
  * He starts the immunisations and does the midichlorian test mostly out of absence of mind while thinking about what it would take, really, to adopt a pair of twins, and exactly how mad his wife would be if he did, and whether the twins would adapt to Coruscant’s total absence of natural light, and then his machine gives off this godawful beeping noise and Baird’s head whips round so hard his neck creaks.
  * The twins’ numbers are off the scale. 
    1. This is sort of a relief. Being a Jedi is an excellent higher purpose, they will be a nice long way away from Thom Sr (obscure but heavyweight philosopher of the Force and galactic-calibre asshole), Marinie would have been proud, and also Baird can keep an eye on them.
    2. Correctly divining from “It is clearly my duty to let them go, don’t forget their droids,” that Thom Sr will do absolutely nothing to create an attachment with the twins, Baird advises the Jedi at the Temple that they have functionally no family.
  * Knowing the Jedi, and also having some experience of Trebond twins in confined quarters, he keeps the droids until the twins are padawans at least and does not mention that he will be looking in on them. At least to keep an eye on their vaccination schedule. Baird can waffle about quarantine and naïve immune systems with the best of them.
  * Fast-forward ten years.
  * Alanna has never had to hide her sex or gender (she is probably just as ambivalent as she is in canon, but not because society wants to stuff her into skirts and marry her off). No. What she has a problem with is her character. Far more open and popular than her cool, rather sarcastic brother, she has a suspicious nature, the temper of a fiend and the sheer tenacity and physical prowess to back it up. This means she has a problem with 
    1. **Roald** , head of the Order, weary and persecuted and typically known as the Peacemaker, has never forgiven himself for a long-dead and unacknowledged relationship with Senator Lianne Naxen, whose son and probable heir Jonathan definitely does not bear any close resemblance to the Peacemaker
    2. **Ralon** , a would-be padawan who is still picking on younglings half his size
    3. **Gareth Naxen** , much older brother to That Senator and close friend to the Peacemaker despite everything, whose own son Gary is freely acknowledged because Gareth does not run away from his problems or his failings, and who would like Alanna of Trebond to please just stop making so much trouble and start living up to her talent.
  * Alanna literally cannot sneeze without being reprimanded for it, especially once she makes a lightsabre and it is purple and everyone is worried about her Falling. She was once confined to the Temple because a goddamned tooka cat with purple eyes took to following her everywhere.
  * Alanna maintains that is not her fault, but does that stop the Peacemaker blaming her for it? 
    1. She still has the tooka cat.
    2. His name is Faithful. He is extremely clever and he once scratched Ralon’s face.
  * Thom, meanwhile, is detached as all hell, he is conforming beautifully to the Jedi lessons, Alanna is very proud.
  * She is even more proud when Duke Roger, brother to Roald, who long ago left the Order to take up his responsibilities as Duke of Conté, returns to Coruscant. 
    1. Duke Roger is impressed by Thom, which is only as it should be.
    2. Duke Roger does give Alanna the vague creeps, but her visions have never been much of anything and one must be rational and a good Jedi, therefore –
    3. Duke Roger takes Thom as his padawan when Alanna and Thom are twelve, which is good, obviously, but
    4. Alanna is left behind.
  * She worries. A lot. Thom says she can just go back to Trebond and be the lady of Trebond, somebody needs to run the damn continent, she could be in the Senate one day –
  * But Thom is a mystic who would be happy with nothing but his books and Alanna has never wanted anything other than to be a Jedi Knight.
  * She gets all the way to her thirteenth birthday, makes her one last act as a Jedi beating up Ralon in a rational and scientific manner because she caught him picking on a nine-year-old Twi’lek, and is claimed as a padawan by her history teacher before Gareth can even draw breath to yell. 
    1. Ralon ages out of the Order four days later and Alanna almost feels sorry for him. 
      1. Ten years later, during the Clone Wars, Ralon comes for her with glowing eyes. She kills him. He does not give up his master’s name, but he laughs and laughs and laughs while he dies.


  * Alanna is delighted to be chosen, but also puzzled, and does not want to be a historian, but there are few people she trusts (except maybe Gary and Thom, and Baird, who is still dropping in on her on a regular basis) and Myles is one of them. 
    1. Myles says 
      1. “Come on, padawan, you can’t mean to say you’ve never visited the lower levels of Coruscant”
      2. and that’s how Alanna ends up making friends with a lady called Eleni who has a loving son named George who isn’t around but writes a lot, and when George turns up she finds herself drinking in all sorts of dodgy places and learning a large number of things not on the Temple curriculum.
    2. Myles also says 
      1. “Padawan, part of independent learning is learning to find your own teachers: may I suggest we visit the Shang so you can improve your sabercraft”
      2. “I’m aware that the Shang are wild Force users, why do you mention it?”


  * “The Peacemaker doesn’t need to know and neither, I would suggest, does Duke Roger”


  1. “If it’s calling to you and it doesn’t feel Dark, it certainly doesn’t to me, pick it up”
  2. and that’s how Alanna ends up with a lightsabre which is at least a thousand years old and fits in her hand like it was made for her, and surprise surprise, is _also_ purple. 


  1. Myles says 
    1. “Now, I think it’s time you assisted me with one of my information-gathering trips to the Senate”
    2. and that’s how Alanna meets Senator Naxen, who looks fragile as a wisp and has very sharp eyes and pacifist views that make the Peacemaker look milquetoast.
  2. Myles says 
    1. “I am perfectly happy for you to own droids, your possessions are not my concern unless they explode in our suite”
    2. and that’s how Baird gives Alanna CO-R4M and M0D-E for her eighteenth birthday.


  * and lastly Myles says 
    1. “Senator Naxen has sent me an urgent transmission: she seems calm but has used some of our danger codes, and I have never in my life had a good feeling about Geonosis”
    2. “Yes, of course the Council are aware we’re going, and happily the Peacemaker is not stupid enough to turn his principles on Gareth when Lianne Naxen’s life is on the line”


  * “Pack both your lightsabers, we’re leaving now”


  1. and that’s how Alanna ends up saving Jonathan Naxen’s life and being knighted for her experiences.


  * It’s safe to say Alanna’s apprenticeship was… eventful. (Baird still thinks Marinie would have been proud.)
  * But the funny thing is. 
    1. Alanna was knighted because of all the work she has already stacked up, and because against all the odds she managed to defeat the Mandalorian who fought with the Geonosians and capture the Geonosian who killed Senator Naxen, and like a proper Jedi she did not lose her cool and kill him, she brought him to justice. 
      1. Plus some trials, about which Alanna never intends to speak, and which involved more zombies than she cares to reflect on.
    2. Except… the Geonosian died on the way back to Coruscant.
    3. It could have been him. He was there. 
      1. But Alanna didn’t see him kill Senator Naxen. She heard Senator Naxen say “I am not, and have never been, afraid of you.” And then she felt Senator Naxen die.
    4. Did Senator Naxen know Geonosians? She must have done. She negotiated with them.
  * Duke Roger and Thom were first on the scene.
  * Alanna is letting her attachments, or maybe just her bad judgement, cloud her thinking. She does not let them cloud her actions.
  * Alanna wants a clone regiment but she doesn’t get one. 
    1. (Gary does. His Clone Commander is much bigger than the average clone, but also a better commander than anyone else, so he got away with the genetic abnormality. Gary gives him books and holonews feeds so he can Better Himself, and out of revenge CC-6679 names himself after the trashiest demi-celebrity he can find, Raoul Gold.)
  * What Alanna does get is the chance to heal, and to fight in the darkest corners of the galaxy, and to work with Baird, and Gary and Raoul, and Jonathan 
    1. Who is now Jon
    2. Who has the bluest eyes she’s ever seen
    3. Who is fighting for peace in the Senate
    4. Who is a wild Force user, because there was always a strong thread of it in the Naxens, and because there was a lot more to Lianne Naxen that met the eye – and obviously that means there’s a lot he can learn from Alanna
    5. Who is, a year into the war, Alanna’s lover.
  * Alanna tries not to be attached. She tries to be a good Jedi. But she knows she will never be as good as Thom, as detached, refined, scholarly… 
    1. That’s okay. Alanna has never thought she was half the Jedi Thom is.
    2. Alanna is just happy to be contributing to the war effort.
    3. Alanna is proud to fight for the Republic.
  * The tide of war keeps advancing. Alanna sacrifices sweat and blood to it. Jonathan, in company with older and more experienced politicians, starts the Council of 2000. 
    1. They argue about that. Alanna believes in the war, even if she’s not sure whether there aren’t other ways -
    2. They argue a lot anyway. It lends spice to life. What difference does one small row make?
  * It takes her and Myles and Jonathan the best part of four years, but eventually they find out who is behind the war. It doesn’t help that Jonathan has trouble believing it. Duke Roger has always been good to his unacknowledged cousin, even before Jonathan swept into his mother’s vacated seat on a wave of popularity and surprising acumen.
  * Alanna goes into shock. And then she goes to the Jedi Council. 
    1. They also have trouble believing it, especially the Peacemaker, who trusts his brother. They confront Duke Roger.
    2. Duke Roger’s eyes turn gold. He kills the Peacemaker and Gareth of Naxen.
    3. He trips Order 66 and a thousand Jedi die. 
      1. Raoul, who experienced a severe head injury months beforehand, is the only one of his regiment not to turn a blaster on Gary. Raoul stops a thousand becoming a thousand and one.
    4. Alanna confronts Thom, and Duke Roger draws on the bonds he has created with Thom to turn him against even his sister. As Thom’s eyes turn gold, Alanna turns her lightsabre on him.
    5. If she didn’t have two she would be dead. Because she does, Thom is.
  * Alanna escapes Coruscant alive, with Myles, thanks to Eleni. Whose raffish son is apparently sneakier than Alanna knew.
  * She finds Jonathan later, as the Alliance to Restore the Republic takes shape. Something has changed, though. 
    1. Maybe it’s that he’s hiding in plain sight in the Imperial Senate and their relationship is too great a risk.
    2. Maybe it’s that Alanna is grieving.
    3. Maybe it’s that Alanna is constantly on the run from Emperor Roger and his feared Black Hand, who seems to have a special hatred for her.
    4. Maybe it’s that they’ve both grown up.
  * Whatever it is, it’s easier to face this new war with Eleni’s scapegrace smuggler son sliding a plate of food in front of her at the end of the day and Raoul talking through battle plans than it is to cling to the empty comfort of Jonathan’s sweet, distant, encrypted words.
  * Especially when the holonews says he’s dating an Imperial favourite. 
    1. Alanna doesn’t care about Josiane.
    2. She doesn’t, okay.
  * The galaxy is dark, and full of terrors. It’s not the one she grew up in. Maybe that’s just because it’s more honest: Alanna saw a thing or two at Myles’s side.
  * But if there’s one thing Alanna still believes in it is hope. 
    1. There will be new hope.
    2. If Alanna has to carve it out of the sky with both of her lightsabers herself, there _will be_ new hope.



 

 

 


	5. Kalasin the Senator, Thom the Smuggler, and Kel the Jedi Knight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twenty years after the fall of the Republic, Kalasin Naxen's planet is extinguished, and new hope rises from its ashes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is all on dovebalitang.

This is the thing about Kalasin Naxen.

 

  * She was always supposed to be a politician. 
    1. Just not like this.
    2. Her marriage was not supposed to be the most valuable thing she brought to the table.
    3. But when the Emperor says _jump_ , everyone else says _how high_ , especially if the Black Hand is in the room.
  * She is the daughter of brilliant politicians. Of Jonathan Naxen, son of the martyred Senator Lianne, who has led his system for more than twenty years and has not died or been pushed out of office yet. Of Thayet jian Wilina, whose foremothers fled the Mandalorian Civil Wars for Alderaan, where Thayet learned what it is to fight for peace. 
    1. There are whole strings of orphanages and schools across the galaxy that bear Thayet's name.
    2. The history of Naxen is covered over in her father's.
    3. Her family is synonymous with her planet.
    4. Kalasin is meant to be just as brilliant. She wants to be, she will be -


  * When Kalasin is only nineteen and a junior senator, the oldest of a promising cohort of Naxen children with public service written all over them, the Emperor says that his ally needs an heir, and as such, his heir presumptive needs a wife. 
    1. Jonathan Naxen tries hard to refuse.
    2. He loves his daughter, so it's probably not that he didn't try hard enough.
    3. Kalasin Naxen is left with nothing to hope for except that Kaddar Iliniat will be kind.


  * Kalasin is a good girl and she doesn’t cry.


  * Nor does she allude to the Rebel work she knows is going on around her even though she is not supposed to know about it and certainly isn't allowed to take part, especially not now she will be married into the lineage of one of the Emperor's closest allies. 
    1. Her "I don't know what you're talking about," to Moff Tarkin is wholly genuine
    2. He tortures her anyway
    3. And then he shows her her planet
    4. And then, between the space of one breath and the next
    5. Naxen is gone.


  * Because Kalasin could not give the right answers.


  * One day a Togruta called Daine will stroke her hair and tell her there are no right answers to questions like that, and that it is not her fault, that Shili suffered for Daine and it is not Daine's fault either, neither of them is to blame – 
    1. But today Kalasin is alone.


  * Her mother was a genius. Her father commanded respect...


  * Kalasin Naxen falls to her knees and screams as her siblings and parents burn to dust, and she is left alone in the darkness.


  * Tarkin thinks he has broken Kalasin. 
    1. The Black Hand informs Tarkin that he is a moron.
    2. Tarkin does not listen.


  * On Naxen white is for mourning, and Tarkin knows this. In her cell Kalasin calls for her wardrobe and dresses in white. 
    1. Tarkin allows it.
    2. "You are stupid," says the Black Hand, and Tarkin does not listen. The Black Hand remembers that on Alderaan, birth planet of Thayet the Peerless, white is for purpose - and on Mandalore, home of Thayet's foremothers, white is for justice.
    3. Later Kalasin's beautiful wounded face will be beamed across the galaxy, the last Senator of Naxen, dressed in white, calling for justice, calling for Rebellion, and the Emperor will call Tarkin much worse than stupid.
    4. But that is all to come, and today Kalasin's fingers are trembling as she does up her buttons and wonders, if she'd tried to kill Tarkin, if she'd distracted him at a crucial moment, would Naxen have been saved?
    5. No.
    6. Kalasin lies down on her bed and goes to sleep.


  * She is woken by a stormtrooper pushing open her door. 
    1. She sits up and glowers. Daughter of Naxen, descendant of warriors, princess-presumptive of Carthak, wearing white for justice.
    2. "Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"
    3. "Oh," says the boy under the helmet, who is her own age, who has red hair and hazel eyes. "No. We're here to rescue you."



 

This is the thing about Thom Cooper.

 

  * When you're the Lioness's son there are certain expectations. 
    1. That's how they put it. 'The Lioness's son'. Or sometimes 'cub'.
    2. Thom looks at the weary lines on his mother's face and the silver in her copper hair and knows he needs to be a lion, not a cub, for her sake. And for the sake of all the people who are counting on him.
    3. And Aly and Alan and Daine. But Thom was here first and the weight lies heaviest on him.
    4. He's enough of a Jedi - he feels best in the Force - but is he enough of a person? There are a _lot_ of people counting on him. Thom knows the Force can be full of darkness, he's been to Mustafar and to Malachor and to Dagobah –
    5. Thom knows.


  * All things considered it's a lot easier to be the Whisper Man's boy, the one with the red hair and the uncanny ways, and since Da mostly raised him anyway... 
    1. An important parenthesis: Thom doesn't resent his mother. He understands. But sometimes he misses her.


  * Look, Thom often gets tangled up in his words, and he's certainly never been able to explain this coherently to his parents, but there are two things that make sense to him: 
    1. Being a Jedi, sunk in the Force, moving with its flow
    2. Flying the _Dove_ with Da and his first mate Marek. 
      1. All right, so it's usually a bit of a mess.
      2. In fact, a lot of a mess.


  * Thom has seen so much, and brought back so much information, so many Jedi things believed lost; he has crossed the stars and salvaged crystal from the Temple at Jedha, and once he even found a live Jedi.


  1. Thom will never forget the look on his mother's face when he brought Douglass back, and with him Sacherell's bones.
  2. Alanna has lost so much, and sometimes, this way, Thom gets to return a fragment or two.


  * "This is what I'm meant to do, Mama," Thom says, and his mother smiles at him like she's tired and proud, and says "All right, then." 
    1. His mother sits down on his father's lap and leans her head against his. George Cooper lets out a very long breath, puts his arm around Alanna the Lioness's waist and shuts his eyes.
    2. Thom gets up and leaves to give them privacy.
    3. He also herds Aly and Alan out of the way. Alan wants to be a Jedi Knight, which is fine, they're all very proud, but Aly wants to be a spy, and she seems not to have realised just how valuable the Lioness's daughter would be to the Empire if she were caught. 
      1. Aly is reckless, and Thom can't see her future. It worries him.


  * The next day they're sent to shadow a ship headed from Naxen to Carthak. 
    1. "Why are we doing this," Thom says.
    2. "As a favour to an old friend," George Cooper says.
    3. "What the fuck is that moon doing there," Marek snarls.


  * There's a moon where one shouldn't be, no planet where one should be, and a shockwave of pain and fear and grief has just pinned Thom to the wall.


  * Where did a _whole planet_ go?


  * Thom clocks the weaponry on that 'moon', works it out, and hurries out of the cockpit to throw up. 


  * "Kalasin's ship registers onboard," his father is saying grimly when he comes back, "And I'm not trying to worry you, but that's a tractor beam." 
    1. "I told you all of this was a bad idea," Marek roars. "None of it changes anything for that poor kid. And as for the plans -"
    2. "Is that what we’re here for?" Thom says, confused. "To rescue Kalasin? Kalasin who?"
    3. "No," Marek says. "Sort of," Thom's Da says, and then he sighs. "I suppose that's what we're here for now. I hope your lightsaber lessons are going well, laddie. But don't leave anyone alive if they see it."
    4. This seems a lot more serious than the Rogue, is all Thom can think, which is ridiculous, because this is _three hundred times_ the size of any trouble Hondo Ohnaka ever got himself into, including the Hutt thing. Thom doesn't have much time to realise this, though, because in short order, Thom is 
      1. dressed up as a stormtrooper
      2. sneaking through an Imperial ship that can fry whole planets


  * on the lookout for an astromech, for some reason


  1. opening a cell door to find a young senator with red-rimmed blue eyes and a truly poisonous stare looking back at him.


  * "What kind of a rescue _is_ this?" Kalasin Naxen cries about half an hour later, being too nicely brought up to shriek.


  * "The kind nobody got to plan!" Thom, who was not nicely brought up, shrieks back.


  * Marek has the astromech. At least, he has _an_  astromech. Thom has the senator, who has confiscated his blaster and is doing an alarmingly good job with it. Da – 
    1. Da is duelling the Black Hand with a pair of vibroblades, which is so ridiculous Thom doesn't even know where to begin, and because vibroblades are no real match for plasma he is going to die in the next thirty seconds.
    2. "Go!" Da shouts. "Just go!"
    3. It's the only sensible thing for a spymaster in this situation to do. Da will never allow them to take him alive. Thom has never not followed his father's orders before.
    4. "Go ahead," Thom tells Kalasin, who doesn’t need telling twice.
    5. Thom stops, and takes a deep breath. 
      1. I am one with the Force, he thinks, and reaches out, and
      2. the Black Hand lowers his lightsaber and stares, and
      3. George Cooper comes flying across the hangar, and
      4. the Black Hand is blown back beyond the hangar doors.


  * "You're a Jedi," Senator Naxen says, once they're taking off. "Well," Thom says, "that's the idea."


  * "Oh, lad," Da says, once they're in hyperspace, "I am so proud of you. You should have left me to die." 
    1. Thom is speechless.
    2. Da takes him gently by the shoulders. "Now the Black Hand knows who you are."
    3. "Your son?" Thom hazards.
    4. "No," Da says. His bright eyes are old and tired. "Your mother's."


  * There is no time to explore this, because that's the moment Kalasin Naxen discovers the astromech handing a chip full of Death Star plans over to Marek, and has a total sense of humour failure. 
    1. Thom doesn’t sleep, all the way back to Yavin IV.
    2. Neither does his father.


  * There is a child waiting for them when they land, which is odd. She's about ten or twelve, tall and solidly built, with calm eyes and shields like a mountain, and when Thom looks at her he sees the next leader of the New Jedi Order, a foot taller and carrying a fuck-off enormous double-ended lightsaber. 
    1. All right, then. Thom will roll with that. Rather her than him.
    2. She sees something too, when she looks at him, but Thom has no idea what. He only knows she saw something because of the slight double-blink and the way her shields harden further.
    3. She introduces herself as Gary's padawan, which is new, as in last-three-days new, and honestly Thom's kind of surprised. Her name is Kel.
    4. She touches Kalasin's hand, and Kalasin breathes out, and the lines between her brows smooth away for a while.
    5. "Gary says he is your cousin," Kel says. "And he would like to offer you a meal and a berth until you are settled. However long that takes."
    6. "Cousin?" Kalasin's eyes narrow. "I was told my cousin's clone commander killed him during the Clone Wars."
    7. "I think he was believed dead for a long time," Thom says cautiously. How many lies did Jonathan Naxen tell his daughter? "But Uncle Raoul never raised a blaster to him. And just so you know, they're married."
    8. Kalasin is a politician. Her face does not flicker. Neither does Kel's. Thom doesn't want to know what kind of contortions his own is going through.


  * The next day, when the twins have gone to kitchens duty, Thom corrals his father, his mother, and his grandfather Myles in one room, bars the door to various admirals, and tells everyone it’s Jedi business.


  * His mother knows what he wants to ask before he says anything. 
    1. "The first thing you need to know," Alanna of Trebond says, "is that names are not destiny."



 

And this is the thing about Keladry Mindelan.

 

  * The only thing she has ever wanted is to serve the Rebellion. 
    1. This is not a huge surprise. Her father is a negotiator for the Rebellion, her mother his bodyguard. Kel is the youngest of a clan of fighters, administrators, engineers, translators, every last one a Rebel.
    2. The fact that she has enough of the Force to train as a Jedi Knight, however, is frankly astonishing.
    3. Conal always said she'd make the perfect droid tech; then no-one would have to like her.
    4. It's true she's very good with droids. People overlook them.
    5. But it's not _special_. Unless maybe it is.


  * The day Alderaan is destroyed, Kel is working on a seriously damaged X-wing astromech. It's been written off, which is why an eleven-year-old is allowed to tinker with it on her day off. 
    1. She almost has it perfect when a wave of misery and fear rolls through her, and Kel, quiet Kel, raised among Yamanis for whom emotion is disgrace, breaks down in floods of inconsolable tears.
    2. This is weird as hell until Alanna the Lioness barges into the engineering quarter in search of a traumatised youngling, and latches onto Kel like Kel is a scared kitten. 
      1. Kel is only three inches shorter than her, which is an obstacle, but the Lioness doesn't let it stand in her way.
    3. Then it's weird, but it's _Force_ weird, which means that Kel will no longer be homeschooled by her mother or slotted into distance classes, but also means that Kel is now on an Imperial hitlist and has a thoroughly uncertain destiny. At least a droid tech could be a civilian. 
      1. Swings and roundabouts, as the saying goes.
      2. Piers and Ilane are very proud and also very terrified out of their fucking minds.


  * Kel would have liked to be Alanna's padawan, but it's not possible, for reasons Kel does not understand, and which appear to involve 
    1. The will of the Force
    2. The Black Hand's habit of trying to kill off everyone the Lioness loves.


  * Instead Alanna takes her to a deceptively battered ship, and introduces her to an enormous former clonetrooper with a welcoming smile who wears bespoke armour and a lot of tattoos, and a tall, skinny man with a lightsaber, datapads and flimsis stacked around him, and prematurely greying hair. 
    1. "Oh," says the Jedi. "You're our next padawan."
    2. "Our?" says Alanna, suspiciously.
    3. "Dibs," says the clone, whose name is Raoul.
    4. "Fine," says Alanna, propping her hands on her hips. "You explain it to her parents."


  * Tension follows on Yavin IV. The Death Star isn't in the system yet but it might not be far. 
    1. Kel knows she will now evacuate with Gary and Raoul, and possibly the Cooper twins. Not with her parents or siblings.
    2. She's a Jedi. That makes her a priority. That means she has to be saved from the Empire, and that leaves a hollow spot behind Kel's ribs.
    3. The sooner she can grow up and do the saving, the better.


  * "What are we waiting for?" she asks Gary, after a session of meditation, and an attempt at moving some small pebbles around. Today she brought half of her things to their ship, _Third_ : Raoul says it's named after their old regiment, but it passes for part of a serial number. 
    1. "Hope," says Gary.
    2. One day, when Kel's a Knight, she's going to teach all her padawans that being enigmatic is unhelpful and pointless.


  * Hope turns out to be a senator from obliterated Naxen, who is beautiful and grieving and shielded better than Kel herself. Hope is accompanied by Thom Cooper, who Kel knows by reputation. 
    1. She looks at him, and sees him a few years older and one hand shorter, staggering forward from the darkened edges of a hall with all the light before him, and screaming - _Mother, no_!
    2. She tries not to let it show in her face. She was very good at that when they lived in the Yamani Federation. He is not very good at it, but she has no idea what he saw. She'd be surprised if it was the same thing. 
      1. She likes what she knows of him, so she hopes it wasn't.
    3. She gives Senator Naxen Gary's message, and then she can't stop herself - she reaches out slightly and touches one of the senator's pale hands. 
      1. Senator Naxen thinks she's alone, she thinks she is abandoned, she thinks she has nothing but a grim fight before her, she has lost every stone she ever called home, and Kel can't walk away from that. She can't.
      2. The small victory of Kalasin's relief is why Kel wants to be a Jedi.


  * "Call me Kalasin," Senator Naxen says. "How long have you been a Jedi?" 
    1. "About four days," says Kel.
    2. Kalasin blinks. "I'm sure you'll be very good at it."
    3. "I hope so," Kel says. "Do you know what you plan to be yet?"
    4. It's not a fair question. She tries to say it delicately. But Kalasin is walking like someone with a plan.


  * Kalasin turns those dark blue eyes on Kel. She is perfectly calm and perfectly centred, her grief contained for the present, and the Force spins around her like a coin on a table. 
    1. Heads or tails? Kel thinks.
    2. "Justice," Kalasin says. "Mercy. Restitution."
    3. Heads.
    4. Kel can check 'restitution' in the dictionary later, but none of that felt Dark.


  * "Well," Kel says. "I know you'll be good at that."




	6. Tortall/Star Wars: What Happened Next

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snippets regarding the fate of other characters from the previous two chapters, at the request of dovebalitang. Pulled from a tumblr chat and tidied up.

**Daine**

 

I'm not quite sure how Daine's arc works, though I am fairly sure she is about 50% Force by volume and the first time she turned all that on Alanna Alanna propelled herself backwards through a wall and complained of seeing spots for the rest of the day. But I feel like sticking to the canon timings, ish, so Daine's story happens before Kel's and Kalasin’s and Thom's.

 

She is definitely a Togruta huntress.

 

**Kalasin**

 

Kalasin and Thom develop a Thing over the course of the war. It's not a lasting one, they’re not really suited, but there are times - particularly during the war - when no-one understand the last Senator of Naxen like the Lioness's son and heir. They grow apart naturally even before peace is declared and develop a solid friendship, instead. A less fractious one than their parents', because they are both naturally inclined to negotiate. Kalasin never fights in the front lines, but aggressively negotiates her way across the galaxy, and takes part in more than one rearguard fuck-the-Empire's-here action. She becomes a Senator, and then President. To her surprise she has a relationship with Kaddar Iliniat, reforming lord of the Carthak system, but obviously it's politically impossible and neither of them can get the bad taste of their arranged match out of their mouths. But Kaddar is a good man, it could have been worse. Kalasin eventually marries the Princess Shinkokami, the finest politician she's ever met. Stepping down from the Presidency at 45, she makes the cause of her life creating a strong civil society with better checks and balances and an enforced charter of rights.

 

**Thom**

 

Thom fights. He fights to preserve, mainly, but also he spends a lot of time on the run, because the Black Hand knows he has a nephew and potential apprentice now. He worries about his mother a lot, a worry which is justified when Alanna voluntarily turns herself in to try to call the Black Hand back to the light. Thom follows her. He isn’t in time to witness Alanna's Fall and recovery, or Emperor Roger's electrocution of her. What he does see is the Black Hand lifting Alanna from the floor, and the two of them charging together and taking Roger down into the Death Star's core.

 

Thom is a much quieter man after that. He never voluntarily walks into battle again. He devotes his life to exploration and teaching, but his feet are always itchy so his classes are irregular. He goes down in history as the man who salvaged the history of the Jedi Order. History forgets that he watched his mother die. Thom the historian makes it that way.

 

**Kel**

 

Kel spends the war as an apprentice, a raiser of morale, a doer of the practical, a teacher of self-defence. Gary and Raoul are good teachers to her; they are like family. In a lot of ways (and this grieves Kel) they are her family. Not all the Mindelans make it out of the war.

 

Kel is fighting on the surface of Endor when the shockwaves of the Lioness's death force her to her knees. Raoul saves her, but at the cost of life-altering injuries. He says clones were always meant to die for their Jedi. Kel tells him to shut up.

 

After the war there are a lot more Force sensitives to deal with. Alanna's dead, Thom's broken, Gary's currently trying to glue a political system together out of tinfoil and tape, and Daine is fully occupied with disentangling the Empire's non-human slavery network. Kel steps up and Thom starts posting packages to Jedi Master Keladry Mindelan, Second Jedi Temple, New Jedi Order, Yavin IV, Yavin System. Kel calls him up at enormous expense to lecture him and the next parcel is addressed to the Jedi Grand Master.

 

Whatever. Kel has work to do.

 

Kel has brief relationships and many close friends. And she has Thom, most of whose laughter comes from teasing her. (She can't grudge it to him.) He flies into the Temple and brings her priceless relics, he stays as long as he can bear to help her understand them, then he goes. He trades, and funnels money into the Temple, uses what influence he has in Kel's favour, and occasionally kidnaps her for a holiday when Daine and George and Raoul say she needs one.

 

Kel doesn't realise that Thom is the only person she can't really do without until her latest temporary partner, Cleon, complains that he can't keep her attention. If Gary doesn't want to change the dates of his seminars on governance then Daine wants to know if she can take Kel's padawan hunting on Shili or Lalasa has a complaint to issue about the laundry, and the only person who can beat out those concerns is Thom.

 

"Well, he's got a point, Master Kel," Tobe says. "Also, are we meditating today or not?" They are, which sort of proves Cleon's point. Kel isn't surprised when they break up.

 

I don't know if they have kids, I know they don't get married, but Kel and Thom grow old together, and the Second Jedi Temple has a statue of each of them, on either side of the front door. In later years Kalasin Naxen's great-granddaughter Lianokami will cause a traffic jam by sitting there to meditate.

 

"I was called," she says to half-god Daine, who is already mostly one with the Force.

 

Daine rubs her forehead. "Odd's bobs," she sighs, finally. "Naxens."

 

 

**George**

 

George lives. So does Myles, for a while, long enough to meet Kel and teach her a few things. Introduce her to a few people. Myles dies when things are looking up, and Eleni's by his side.

 

George, I think, becomes Kalasin's teacher, and Kel's sneaky bastard right hand. He also has a loud distraction by the name of Neal Queenscove, who survives the decimation of his family by the Empire and turns out to be the most dramatic bastard ever to sit foot in a medical bay, but also to have the right brain for spy work.

 

George has a lot of fun. Especially when Kel receives another parcel addressed to the Jedi Grand Master, and has one of those very pointed _I'm not MAD, Thom, just disappointed_ silences. And... Alanna is always with him. He knows that.

 

Thom has taken him some weird-ass places, and there, where the currents are just right, George can see her.

 

**Aly**

 

Aly I am tempted to put in _Rogue One_ , except it's the second Death Star and she has spent a few years rocketing around various Core and mid-Rim planets, James Bonding. (She’s not all that much like actual Jyn.) Nawat fills Cassian's role, angry at Aly because Aly is just so flippant, but also drawn to her. Ulasim and Chenobu and a weird half-Force-something-not-at-all friendly like Aunt Daine, who insists on being called Kyprioth, are most of the rest of the team.

 

Dove herself is the Bodhi figure, who once wanted to join the Imperial Navy and map the stars but then Learned Otherwise and in the course of Learning Otherwise learned a whole lot of other things.

 

 ***

 

At least 50% of all of them live happily ever after.


	7. I Thought Society Types Never Rose Before Noon (Jack & Phryne: Star Wars AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack Robinson, Jedi Knight, can't figure Phryne Fisher out.
> 
> What brings a brilliant, dedicated combat nurse back from the front lines of the Clone Wars to swan around Coruscant like the thoughtless socialite she isn't?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Norcumi inspired this and I couldn't not write it.

Jack Robinson’s main problem with Phryne Fisher is that he doesn’t know what she is or how to deal with her, whether she’s swanning around Coruscant in sheer blue silk and dining with Senators, receiving threats to her life on Chandrila II, or appearing from  _the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere_  on Geonosis, towing a sheepish but upright young member of the AgriCorps and two members of the Coruscant Guard behind her.

“Sorry, can’t stop to chat,” the Honourable Miss Fisher cries as she swans past, blaster in one hand, entourage at her beck and call.

This is a battlefield. Jack bloody well hopes not.

He never finds out what Phryne Fisher was doing on Geonosis or why. He finds out who the AgriCorps member is by the very simple expedient of questioning his padawan, who has a terrible, terrible crush. He finds out how Miss Fisher acquired and suborned two members of the Coruscant Guard, although how she made their detachment permanent still confuses him. He finds out where she comes from - daughter of a scapegrace politician and a Jedi who renounced the Order, niece of a Jedi Master, cousin to half of galactic society - and what she used to do for a living - combat nurse, for the first year or so of the Clone Wars, and then something he can’t find out about brought her back to a glittering, nomadic life of luxury.

Jack was once one of Master Sinube’s prize pupils. He was meant to be a detective, and then of course the war came along. Hugh was meant to be a detective, too, and then of course the war came along.

Miss Fisher walked away from the war, and Jack envies her for that, and resents her for that, and at the same time doesn’t understand why or how she did it, and what changed her mind. She’s fearless, and her service record was exemplary, excellent work and superlative cool under fire. She lifted morale like a youngling lifts a feather.

So what happened?

One day Jack rounds a corner, Hugh in tow, to find that Dot is levitating Miss Fisher into a ninetieth-floor window.

“I think this is the place,” Jack’s saying, and Hugh makes a small noise Jack has come to know well over the last ten years and says “and I think that’s Miss Fisher.”

Jack comes to a halt and stares at the tableau. “I ought to report Dot Williams to her superiors.”

“Same day you file a police report against Phryne Fisher, Master,” Hugh says, mild and agreeable and stubborn as a bantha.

Jack gives him the fishy look he deserves, and proceeds to the ninetieth-floor apartment, which Phryne Fisher is expertly searching for Force knows what. He leaves Hugh to deliver an official reprimand to Dorothy in her speeder, which the lad will enjoy.

“Breaking and entering,” he remarks, once Phryne is in his sights.

“Entering,” Phryne corrects. “The window was open.” She gives him her brightest smile. “Are you going to arrest me, Master Robinson?”

The question didn’t deserve an answer. Jack didn’t give her one. “What is it you do for a living, Miss Fisher?”

“I don’t work, Master Robinson. I’d assumed you’d noticed.”

“I said for a living, Miss Fisher. Not for pay.”

There’s a silence.

“I find things out,” Phryne says, eventually. “Things that need to be found out.”

Jack eyes the wardrobe she was searching. “Such as?”

Phryne sets the dress she was patting down back in its place. “How a man who killed little girls comes to be a candidate for release from a Republic jail,” she says, her voice as light and bright as his own saber. “How another man selling substandard medical care to the Republic’s poorest systems gets away with it.” She closes the wardrobe door. “How Mandalore’s black markets escape Duchess Satine’s very sincere efforts to stamp them out.” She looks directly at Jack, finally, without flirtation or misdirection, and it’s - just like listening to her voice, looking into her eyes is like looking into the core of his lightsaber. Pale blue and perfectly merciless.

There’s a statue of Justice in Jack’s favourite meditation hall, and he’s thinking of it when Phryne says so casually it’s not casual at all “How a galaxy gets trapped in an unwinnable war.”

Jack loses all his breath at once.

“That sounds like a job for the authorities,” he says eventually, more unevenly than he would like. “A bit ambitious for a woman alone. Don’t you think?”

“The authorities tried to free my sister’s murderer,” Phryne says, and winks, back to the flirtation, back to the superficial. “And besides, there’s no such thing as too ambitious, only just imaginative enough.”

She wishes him a good day, and is gone before Jack can ask her what she was looking for in this flat.  


	8. my brother's keeper (Rey Organa & Kylo Ren)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo Ren wants to be Rey's brother in truth as well as in DNA. 
> 
> The position, Rey explains to him, is not vacant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For corinthiahale, who asked for a piece after This Crude Matter. Inspired by a chat with someone in the comments of _so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen_.

The key thing, everyone has agreed, is to keep Rey as far away from Kylo Ren as possible. She is not yet strong enough to take him on. She is also to be kept well off the front lines, firstly because the price on her head is astronomical and she attracts a great deal of attention, and secondly because she lacks the experience. There will be no more Skywalkers popped into X-wings for last-minute suicide missions, thank you very much. Instead - and both of Rey’s grandfathers and her parents agree on this, which makes it more or less law - Rey can stick to training with Finn, training with Luke, and working as a mechanic. She’s very good at two out of three of these things and her uncle says it’s simply a mismatch between their teaching and learning styles. (Rey says the reason it doesn’t work all that well is that she’s not a Jedi. This is harder to deal with, and therefore not discussed.)

 

The problem with this neat plan is that sometimes, in battle, the front line comes to you. And so, in this case, does Kylo Ren.

 

He bursts through the back of the workspace Rey is busy in.

 

(”Oh fuck shit fuck,” says Admiral Antilles, as he is advised of this incursion. “Someone get Skywalker and that Rook kid down there fucking yesterday. Leia’s gonna kill me if she gets hurt.”)

 

A lot of people scream and some run: Rey isn’t among them. She jumps to her feet, shepherding a half-finished droid towards an emergency exit, and draws her lightsaber. She usually leaves it in a cupboard on the Falcon, but she has - was going to have lightsaber training in half an hour, and it didn’t seem worth it to go back.

 

(Admiral Antilles calls Rey’s personal comm from his own, in the vague hope that he can make sure she’s all right, and order her away from the chaos.)

 

There’s already a skirmish starting. Rey throws herself into it, and catches Kylo Ren’s lightsaber on hers.

 

“Sister,” he says, “your lessons are going well, you’re improving,” which is a terrible opening line, and only causes Rey to snarl and go for him like he’s the Hutt-swiving son of a bitch Weequay bastard who once tried to knife Baze when he wasn’t looking.

 

(Admiral Antilles punches fretfully at his comm and then refocuses: he can’t afford to waste time on this and the kid is not picking up.)

 

They brawl all over the hangar - and it is a brawl. Obi-Wan Kenobi would die of shame if he could see their footwork, or Rey whacking Kylo Ren in the face with an entire box of tools he doesn’t manage to deflect entirely, or Kylo Ren flinging her backwards over several droids. Rey, sore and bruised and firmly centred in that quiet spot Baze taught her to find in moments of stress that can only be resolved with violence, barely notices the pain, or the fact that her comm is now broken and broadcasting. Kylo Ren is bleeding and limping: that’s the most important thing.

 

Kylo Ren wrenches what is definitely a broken nose back into some semblance of order. Dried blood cracks across his face when he speaks. “Is this any way to treat your brother?” he says, low and ominous.

 

“ _E chu ta_ ,” Rey snarls back, in the low drawling accent of Jakku that makes every syllable twice as long as it needs to be, just to make it totally clear how much the speaker wants you to go fuck yourself. “I already _have_ a brother, and his name is Poe Dameron, so you can just _EAT SHIT_ -”

 

Kylo Ren howls in rage and attacks in earnest.

 

“Kriffing fuck,” Rey mutters, and defends herself as best as she can for the next thirty seconds until Finn and Uncle Luke finally make it to her and she can retreat.

 

Obviously, the story is everywhere within hours. Rey refuses to be embarrassed; she just accepts Poe’s extremely tight hug and elbows her father when he teases her. Her mother just shakes her head and smiles.

 

“One more for dinner, then,” Baze says to Rey, ruffling her hair as she pinkens.

 

“This is acceptable. You make an entertaining grandson,” Chirrut says to Poe, who still has a model of Rogue One’s stolen Imperial shuttle on his bedroom shelf, and who goes red around the ears and stutters.

 

 

 

Six months later they’re on Yavin IV. It’s a bit of a delicate situation. Not everyone in the former Rebellion - and Yavin IV’s population is a solid 70% Rebellion-affiliated, at a minimum - backed Leia’s initial efforts against the First Order. Kes Dameron was firmly in the sceptics’ camp, and hasn’t seen his son since Poe defected to the Resistance. All communications have been conducted through a safe intermediary, such as Jyn or Cassian, who theoretically live down the road and (equally theoretically) are Leia’s personal aides rather than her heads of Intelligence.

 

Now they’re having a barbecue together, because Poe misses his father like a missing limb, because there is support on Yavin IV for Leia to rally and she needs to get back to her roots, and because her delegation is half-camped in Jyn and Cassian’s house while they’re off hunting stormtrooper academies with Kaytoo, and that house is (after all) only just down the road from the Dameron family home. Leia can justify it in her head all she likes, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s planning to have dinner with a man who hates her for the strong possibility that she will one day get his son killed. Kes extended the invitation, but he might have done that just so he can yell at her.

 

Han knows she’s uncomfortable. He’s staying very close. She doesn’t know whether to be annoyed or grateful.

 

The kids are playing with Shara’s old X-wing. Chirrut and Luke are communing with the tree in the back garden. Baze is pretending not to be joining in.

 

The coals on the barbecue are not yet at the right glowing temperature for grilling and they won’t be for a while.

 

“So,” Kes says eventually, swirling his beer in its bottle. “I hear my son is your daughter’s brother.”

 

“About that,” Han says, and Kes gesticulates him into silence with the bottle.

 

Han and Leia share a vaguely worried glance. Where the hell is this going?

 

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t,” Kes says, and looks away, and then down at the floor. Leia’s heart sinks into her boots: Shara and Kes always wanted another kid, but it didn’t happen. “Well.”

 

He looks back at them. His eyes are glistening with something.

 

“I hope you’ll excuse me from the marriage,” he says. “Shara would never forgive me for not making sure she got a piece of that too.”

 

Leia’s jaw drops, quite involuntarily.

 

“The fuck?” Han says, and Kes breaks.

 

It turns out what his eyes were glittering with was tears of laughter.


	9. Reservation, Name of Andor (Jyn/Cassian)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cassian is temporarily defeated by Ancelstierran mores, and Jyn gets engaged to her pre-existing husband.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For brynnmclean, in my tumblr prompts spree. :)

“I asked,” Cassian said clearly and distinctly, “for a double room.”

 

“And that’s what they gave you,” Jyn said, trying not to laugh and repressing a sigh. It was very difficult to decide which she wanted to do more, and even harder to stop herself doing both at once, which seemed like it would have consequences for her respiratory tract. “Cassian, what’s a double room in the Old Kingdom?”

 

Cassian gave her a fishy look. 

 

“Just… just tell me. And Miss Tilda here.” Jyn gestured vaguely at the neat, disapproving young maid who’d been sent to show them to their rooms at the Bain Hotel.

 

“Two rooms, with a connecting door or shared facilities, for members of a party who need additional space, particularly where they require space to confer or to work together.” Cassian had passed rapidly but subtly from fishy to grumpy. It probably wasn’t clear to Tilda, but at this point Jyn could read Cassian like a book. “Similar arrangements are common all over the world.”

 

“Not in Ancelstierre they aren’t.” Jyn pinched the bridge of her nose. “No wonder the maître d’hôtel looked at me like yesterday’s tuna.” She turned to Tilda. “Please go downstairs and explain there’s been a misunderstanding. Perhaps there’s an additional room close by.”

 

Tilda bobbed a curtsey and hurried off. Jyn sat down, bouncing slightly, on the large, richly-draped double bed that was the cause of their immediate problems. If you could call them problems. Over the last two years, Jyn had reached the point where anything smaller than a Stilken was classified as an inconvenience.

 

Cassian, rigid with irritation at himself, took up a position near the writing desk.

 

Jyn rolled her eyes. “It’s not your fault, Cassian. I should have checked. This is only the second time you’ve ever been to Ancelstierre.”

 

“This is absurd,” Cassian said, with the faintest hint of a growl to it. 

 

“I know,” Jyn said. “Leia’s going to cry laughing when I tell her.”

 

Cassian looked like he’d bitten into a lemon. “We’re supposed to be blending in, not causing a scandal.”   
  


“We’re in Ancelstierre, and we turned up with swords and Charter marks,” Jyn said, crossing her legs beneath her. “I guarantee you we are not blending in.”

 

Cassian glanced at the leather sword cases propped up against the wall. They weren’t doing a very good job of imitating gun cases. He made a small, almost imperceptible huffing noise, and looked away.

 

“Professional pride insulted?” Jyn said lightly.

 

Cassian tapped his fingers against the desk, and opened his mouth to reply.

 

Tilda’s re-entry into the room stopped him. 

 

“Mister Fellowes presents his compliments, and says there are no other rooms to be had in the hotel,” Tilda recited, eyes fixed on the window. “He says he can recommend Mister Andor to the Station Hotel, if you would like to seek alternative arrangements.”   
  


Jyn felt every hair on the back of her neck stand on end. By the look on Cassian’s face, his nerves were also jangling at the thought.

  
“Thank you for asking, Miss Tilda,” Cassian said, cool and professional, sliding back into the ice-cold bodyguard persona he had intended to take on before the Bain Hotel’s double bedroom had derailed matters. “But we will retain the current arrangements, unsatisfactory though they are. It is essential that I remain close to Miss Erso; my commanding officer will not be understanding if I risk her safety through my negligence.”

 

Tilda probably did not take his point, but she did take her leave.

 

Never mind Queen Leia: Jyn laughed until she cried, and ordered dinner to their room.

  
  


Later, when the lights were out and Jyn’s head was tucked firmly under Cassian’s chin, Jyn poked him in the stomach and said “Out with it. What’s bothering you?”

 

“Nothing,” Cassian said, levelly and totally unconvincingly.

 

Jyn sat up, sheets falling to her waist. “Bollocks. You  _ know  _ how tense you are. It’s like sleeping with corrugated iron.”

  
  
“Maybe I should sleep on the floor.”

 

Jyn took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. “ _ Cassian _ .”

 

There was a brief silence, and then Cassian said crossly: “They are behaving as if I’ve dishonoured you. We’re handfast.”

 

“In Ancelstierre, if you don’t have a ring and a marriage certificate, it doesn’t count. It’s not like they have Charter stones to say vows over.”

 

Cassian was silent.

 

“It’s not important,” Jyn said, lying back down. “We can get handfast or married or civilly bonded as many times as we like, and their opinions still won’t be important.”

 

“They behave as if they are,” Cassian said, but it wasn’t an attempt to refute her argument, merely an additional complaint.

 

Jyn threw a leg over his thighs and leaned over him, bracing her elbows on either side of his head. Most of the pillows, overstuffed with feathers, had been abandoned on the floor. “Are you upset because they’re insulting me?”

 

Cassian nodded. The movement was hardly visible in the dim light that filtered through the curtains, but Jyn caught it. 

 

“Don’t be,” she said, and leaned down to kiss him. “I really don’t care about them.”

  
  


Cassian almost missed the train south the next day. Jyn folded her arms and glared at him as he slid into his seat. 

 

He handed her a newspaper. She flicked it open, and glanced down the front pages. “Don’t tell me you nearly missed the train for a copy of the  _ Corvere Examiner _ . Oh, the Moot’s hung again.”

 

Cassian’s expression did not give his opinions on Ancelstierran politics away. “I missed it for this,” he said, holding up a small box. “The newspaper was a bonus.” 

 

Jyn blinked at him until Cassian began to look defensive. “Where the hell did you find a jeweller?”

 

“You said yourself,” he said, without answering her question. “Married, or civilly bonded, or handfasted -”

 

Jyn held out her left hand. “It’s the fourth finger,” she said. “Traditionally.”

 

He leaned forward, and carefully, neatly slid the ring onto her finger. There was a moment of perfect stillness, and then he looked up through his lashes at her, and - despite every hour they’d spent in a shared bed, every time the Queen had greeted them as a pair or Bodhi smiled at them like the two of them together was the best thing he’d ever seen - Jyn found herself breathless.

 

Cassian turned her hand over and kissed her palm, which did not help.

 

The rattling compartment door slid open. 

 

“This compartment is  _ occupied _ ,” Jyn and Cassian said, simultaneously, and without looking up.

 

“Tickets from Bain, please,” said the conductor.

  
  


“I hope you found your visit useful,” Colonel Ackbar said, a week later, as Cassian and Jyn were ushered into his office on the Perimeter. “I’ve got a high opinion of General Tindall.”

 

“So have we,” Jyn said, taking a seat. Someone had thoughtfully remembered to put two in front of Colonel Ackbar’s desk, instead of just the one.  

 

“Tea?” said the colonel hospitably, nodding at an orderly and retrieving a tin of biscuits from a drawer in his desk. “And please try some of these, my nieces made them for me and I hate shortbread. I can’t persuade them that we do have supplies at the Perimeter.”

 

“We ate in Bain,” Cassian said. “Thank you for the offer.”

 

“One for the road?” Colonel Ackbar said hopefully. 

 

“If you’re offering,” Jyn said, and took a breath as well as a biscuit. “But actually, while we’re here…”   
  


“Yes?” Colonel Ackbar said, a hint of wariness under the polite veneer.

 

Jyn watched Cassian from the corner of her eye. “Can we borrow a chaplain?”

 

Cassian’s smile was as warm as the Charter. To Jyn, it felt just as endless.


	10. First, Do No Harm (Mac, Anakin, Obi-Wan)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Dr Mac has Obi-Wan Kenobi exactly where she wants him: in a hospital bed, on a rest order, with crack troops guarding the exits and the enthusiastic cooperation of his padawan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For oftgoesawry in my tumblr prompts spree.

Anakin did not recognise the Healer furiously puffing at a vapour pipe, her feet up on the desk at the entry to the medical ward and a large datapad in her lap. She was typing with one hand and tapping the vapour pipe with the other: her lightsaber was lying on the desk near her feet, beside several cups of caf in varying states of empty, cold, and dried out, and her Jedi robes - slightly bloodstained - were slung over a chair where a padawan or medical aide should be keeping her company.

 

She did not look up, even though Anakin was looming over her.

 

“Uh,” he said, by way of an opening gambit, and scratched his head.

 

“ _Don’t_ tell me,” the Healer said, in a slightly nasal and hugely unimpressed Mid-Rim accent, without looking up. “You’re here for the Disaster Master. I’m not releasing him until he’s slept eight hours and proven he can walk in a straight line without drawing on the Force.”

 

Anakin realised his jaw was hanging slightly loose.

 

“Commander Cody has already been by,” the Healer said, looking up at last and swinging her feet off the desk. Somehow, miraculously, she missed all the cups of caf. “But I think that was more to make sure he didn’t escape than anything else.”

 

Anakin struggled with himself.

 

“Obi-Wan Kenobi has been escaping from my clutches since he was a crècheling,” the Healer said, taking pity on him. “But this time I have crack troops on my side. I witnessed Commander Cody giving the orders myself; he was commendably clear. I’d poach him if I didn’t think Obi-Wan would cry.”

 

“Uh… right,” Anakin said, and propped his hands on his hips, taking a deep breath. “Right. Good. Thank you.”

 

“You’re welcome,” the Healer said, extremely dryly.

 

“Can you make him eat something as well?” Anakin asked. “Before he leaves? If I bring him a proper meal? He keeps nibbling on stuff whenever the men can hand it to him without him noticing.”

 

The Healer’s cool steel eyes glittered. “It would be my _genuine_ pleasure.” She rose, and extended a hand to Anakin. “Lieutenant-Colonel Macmillan, Medical Corps.”

 

“General Skywalker,” Anakin said, starting to smile as he shook her hand. “501st.”

 

“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Lieutenant-Colonel Macmillan said, looking up at him. “Come by any time, so long as it’s not to break him out.”

 

“No, ma’am.”  


“And if you bring him work, I will castrate you, is that clear?”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

“Good man,” Macmillan said, smiling like a razor and pulling a lab coat over her scrubs. The robes stayed exactly where they were. “We’re going to get along. Oh, are you going to the bridge?”

 

Anakin nodded.

 

“Tell the Council from me that if they don’t put my requisitions up the list, I’ll set Prudence Stanley on them.” Macmillan dropped her lightsaber into a capacious pocket and draped a diagnostic tool around her neck. “And if you could remind Master Ki-Adi Mundi that I _know_ he’s behind on his dental appointments, that wouldn’t go amiss either.”

 

“I’ll do my best,” Anakin said. “What do you want me to tell them if they ask about Obi-Wan?”

 

“To fuck off,” Lieutenant-Colonel Macmillan said succinctly, tucking her datapad under one arm and swishing away, a yell of: “And that’s my official medical advice!” echoing down the ward after her disappearing figure.

 

Anakin turned a laugh into a cough, and left for the bridge. He had a feeling Obi-Wan was in good hands.

 


	11. in every living thing (Star Wars!Daine, Onua, Numair, Cloud)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daine's just trying to get off Shili, away from the encampment of Core-world invaders she destroyed. Rebel suppliers and secret Jedi don't feature in her plans.

Once upon a time on a planet called Shili, a huntress went into the plains and didn’t come back for several weeks, which was not unusual; and ten months later she gave birth to a daughter, which was not uncommon.

 

Sarra was a little stranger than that herself. A qualified doctor, when so few Togruta were even permitted to access more than basic educational facilities; never too open, but always skirting the line of Rebellion talking points; and permanently looking to the stars, and somehow looking past the Empire. She spent a lot of time out in the wilds, generally because she was making medical rounds of outlying villages, but sometimes for reasons no-one knew the answer to, and she always came back smiling.

 

She took Daine with her too, and people tried not to comment on the way the child sometimes seemed to glow, or the way things occasionally just happened around her, or her uncanny rapport with prey species that should have feared her and predators that should have challenged her, or -

 

Sarra’s entire village came down with a terrible epidemic of gastrointestinal ills when the Empire’s medical examiners came around. Sarra fought the epidemic almost alone, heroic and beautiful and noble, the perfect example of the best a xeno could be, safely tucked on an out-of-the-way planet with no political history or known record of sedition. The officer in charge wrote her a commendation, rooted out the industrialist responsible for poisoning the water source Sarra’s clan was sitting on top of - he hadn’t paid his bribe, so the jail term stuck - and failed to notice that the midichlorian test given to Veralidaine Sarrasri had not been correctly administered.

 

Sarra successfully danced on the back of this particular rabid akul until a few days after Daine’s thirteenth birthday, and then there was too much money to be got from the minerals under the clan lands, and Sarra was just a bit too visible, and her daughter was just a bit too strange, and there were those who were frightened or greedy.

 

Daine was out in the wilds ferrying medicines. She returned to find a slaughter at her mother’s house, an empty village, and a camp of diggers setting up in the space where it had been. Her clan-kin had neither waited nor left a message.  And maybe that meant saving her life by keeping her hidden, and maybe it meant they were too scared to offer her a home. 

 

Daine didn’t think about any of it. She just opened her heart to the turmoil inside her, and allowed the Force to carry her where it would. The Imperial report on the destruction of the camp, complete with its heavy machinery, would describe it as a freak storm.

 

Daine, when she came to her senses, fled.

 

Months later, she found herself on the other side of the continent, watching a trader expertly size up blurrgs at the merchant fair. Good, sturdy beasts, Daine thought, leaning on her own Cloud and eyeing the animals. They’d carry a fair weight. These ones were smart, too, and they looked strong enough for off-world transport.  The trader was walking round them carefully, lips pursed.

 

Daine glanced down at her tiny, half-scrap datapad, and re-read the job advert and then looked at the trader. A hundred of her mother’s lessons about not drawing attention to herself rung in her head, along with terrible memories of the camp, and the things she’d done to it. She could keep just living wild, she’d survived so far, even though she was missing people, and even though it felt right to be here, and the thought of leaving felt terrifying.

 

Cloud growled and butted Daine forward, her large bulbous head propelling Daine directly into the electrified fence. Daine shrieked, which made the trader look up and Daine flush hot with embarrassment.

 

“Have you come about my advert?” the trader said, doubtfully, looking at Daine as if she were too young. Internally, Daine prayed that she was one of those who’d be easy to convince Togruta just aged differently.

 

“Yes,” Daine said, clear and firm. “My name is Daine.” 

 

“I’m Onua,” said the trader. “Onua Chamtong.” She dusted her dirty hands on her trousers, and shook hands with Daine. It wasn’t a Togruta gesture, but Sarra, who knew her way around human respectability, had taught it to Daine long before. “Let’s talk about the job.”

 

***

 

The ship yawed desperately, and the blurrgs roared in the hold. 

 

_ This is ridiculous! _ Cloud shouted, loud enough for Daine to hear.  _ We should have stayed on Shili! _

 

“It was your idea!” Daine shrieked back, too scared to remember she mustn’t.

 

“What the fuck is that kid talking about,” bawled Tahoi in the pilot’s seat, “and WHY ARE WE OUTRUNNING IMPERIALS, AGAIN.”

 

“They’re not officially Imperials!” Onua corrected, fingers dancing across her console. “And stop corrupting the kid -”

 

“I told you, just because she sometimes seems to understand me doesn’t mean she speaks Wookiee! She doesn’t, I checked! She’s just fucking odd!”

 

“ _ Shut up! _ Oh, Numair, where the  _ hell  _ are you - ha!  _ Yes _ ! Daine!”

 

“Yes?” Daine yelled, from her seat in what was technically a passenger bay, but hadn’t been used as such for about a decade.

 

“There’s an escape pod coming in just now. We’re going to outrun these Carthaki b- these Carthakis, but you said you had some medic training - could you just check on my friend, please?”

 

“Of course!” Daine shouted, and gingerly unsnapped her belt, levering herself to her feet and staggering into the hangar where the escape pod had come to rest on its side. The blurrgs, Daine’s sensitive nose detected, were unhappy with their present predicament. The cargo bay next door was redolent with their opinions.

 

_ THIS IS REVOLTING _ , Cloud said.

 

“I’ll muck you out once we’ve got rid of the Carthakis, Cloud, don’t fuss,” Daine said, hastily consulting the emergency manual and then hitting various switches until one of them popped the cover of the escape pod. The human inside - tall, mostly composed of lanky limbs and black hair flopping everywhere - slid halfway onto the floor without waking up.

 

“Hello?” Daine tried nervously, and tried to remember how to do a pain test on an unconscious human. 

 

He was clutching a datapad in one hand. Daine pried his fingers off it on the basis that it couldn’t be good for him, and then realised that he hadn’t turned the device off before passing out. A wanted poster, annotated with hand-scribbled neon text over the top of the serious Imperial print, carried a picture of his face. It was an identifit picture, not a real holo or even a still image.

 

_ They’ve done a terrible job of my nose _ , said the neon text.

 

_ Arram Draper, wanted for crimes against the Empire, claims to be a Jedi; armed and dangerous, do not approach, reward three million credits, _ said the print.

 

The datapad fell from Daine’s nerveless fingers, and she stared at the unconscious Jedi in shock and horror.

  
“Odds bobs,” she said weakly, and was surprised to hear she still had a voice. “This is far,  _ far  _ beyond the likes of me.”


	12. just the kind of girl I like (Jane, Ahsoka Tano, Phryne, Kit Fisto)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jane Ross, still in the crèche at thirteen, takes her life into her own hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For oft-goes-awry in my tumblr prompts.

Jane Ross, should-have-been-Jedi, turned thirteen and did not stick around. She was never able to explain this to Ahsoka.

 

How do you tell the padawan of the Hero With No Fear – taught by the only Sith-killer for a hundred generations – beloved of half the Masters and heartily disapproved of by the other half – commander of half a battalion of clonetroopers who adored her - one of Plo Koon’s foundlings – that when it came down to it, when it really came down to it, and your choice was between joining the Agricorps or belting it into the Mid-Rim to find your mother again, with only the sum of money the Jedi gave you and a lightsaber you weren’t supposed to have, option two won every time?

 

Jane solved this problem by not saying anything at all. “You should have been a Jedi like Master Kenobi,” Ahsoka said, and “You love studying medicine, you could have joined the Medicorps,” Dot said, and “Better off out of it,” Bert and Cec said robustly, and Lieutenant-Colonel Macmillan said “Hmm, well,” and Miss Fisher looked at her and smiled and said nothing.

 

_I’m not a very nice girl myself. So you’re just the kind of girl I like._

 

Jane had visions, like Ahsoka did; but unlike Ahsoka did, Jane saw her family, and she didn’t see much that was good. Nobody had to break the news to her that she hadn’t been chosen as a padawan, and nobody had to offer her the option of an extra year, a reprieve, time for some of those generals to return from out-of-the-way postings and just _know_ that Jane Ross was the missing piece they were looking for. Jane was already packed and gone.

 

“A girl with a great deal of initiative,” said the crèchemaster.

 

“Do you seriously mean no-one knows where she’s gone?” asked Kit Fisto, who had looked at Jane and known she wasn’t meant to be his padawan but had a strong lingering sense that she was meant to be someone else’s. “This is incredibly irresponsible. A child in our care – how could you not have tracked her?”

 

“Tracking Jane is like sticking a mynock to a wall,” said the crèchemaster. “Technically possible, but you’ll live to regret it.”

 

Fisto folded his arms. “Aren’t you worried?”

 

“She left me a note and has been making regular check-ins,” said the crèchemaster, who had moved from prevention to mitigation some time around Jane’s tenth birthday. “No.”

 

Two months later, she stopped making regular check-ins, and then everybody worried. But by then it was too late.

 

She’d found her mother. As her visions had told her, Helen Ross wasn’t very well.

 

Right, Jane said to herself, trying very hard not to panic. Right.

 

“It’s all right, mother,” she said, stroking Helen’s hair and feeling self-conscious. Her accent was all wrong and she didn’t look right either. Too Coruscanti, too clean, too monastic. “It’s all right.” Her senses were telling her that her mother’s landlady, on the other side of the tissue-thin wall, was listening closely. Let her. “I’m going to fix this.”  


The landlady caught her with one greedy clawing hand on the way out. “Such a good daughter,” she said. “Wanting to spare her poor mother’s pain. Maybe I can put you in the way of a few little jobs.”  


Jane looked down at the landlady’s hand. It didn’t loosen. “Maybe,” she said, levelly.

 

It was lucky for her that the gang who had enslaved her mother, having decided that the best way to pay off Helen Ross’s debts was to set Jane to work, chose one day to put Jane on the Corellian Inter-City Luxury Hovertrain to steal the starlets’ jewels. It was even luckier that Phryne Fisher was using that train to transport herself to her parents’ townhouse in Corellia’s Garden City.

 

The murder was less lucky, but you take what you can get.

 

Jane stepped backwards into a compartment to avoid Judicial, keeping her eyes lowered and her Force presence subdued, and was surprised when the door swung shut and the lock clicked closed without her intervention. She turned, and saw a quietly dressed young woman and a loudly dressed older woman sharing the compartment between them. Neither looked familiar, and Jane felt the hair rise on the back of her neck.

 

“I’ve seen you before,” said the older woman, all glossy black hair and sharp blue eyes. “When I was visiting my aunt.” She tilted her head. “I wasn’t sure. You’ve cut all your hair off, it makes your face look different. But you’re very new to that uniform, aren’t you? And you’ve done the tunic up like a padawan’s robes. Almost, young lady, but not quite.”

 

Jane stayed where she was, frozen to the floor.

 

The other woman, softer-faced and kind-looking, dropped her shields, and Jane realised that she was – if not a Jedi Knight – probably an established member of the Agricorps or the Educorps, Force-sensitive and well-trained.

 

“What are you doing here?” said the older woman.

 

Jane licked her lips and said nothing.

 

One perfect eyebrow arched. “If you don’t tell me anything, I can’t help you.”

 

Slowly, numbly, Jane sat down on one of the banquettes. The woman who was Force-sensitive smiled.

 

The questioner held out a hand. “My name’s Phryne,” she said. “What’s yours?”

 

“Jane,” Jane answered, and shook hands with Phryne, and _knew_.

 

***

 

“You could stay on Corellia,” Phryne said, pulling her gloves off and tossing them onto a hotel sofa, along with an elegant hat that Bert narrowly avoided sitting on. “But if you wanted to stay with me…”

 

“I do,” Jane said quickly, the Force tugging at her every fibre, “yes, please –”

 

Phryne smiled. “Are you sure? Think carefully. It will be dangerous.”

 

“ _Yes_ ,” Jane said, and the Force rang like a bell, all over the Garden City, so loud Jane didn’t know why all the galaxy couldn’t hear it.

 

***

 

The next time she saw Ahsoka Tano, they were both half-grown and in the Senate.

 

“Jane!” Ahsoka exclaimed, coming to an abrupt halt instead of trailing after Master Skywalker, who was deep in conversation with Senator Amidala and Master Fisto about the implications of the Mon Cala Incident and the Quarrens’ role in proceedings, and a senatorial investigation that had got stuck somewhere in committee.

 

“Ahsoka!” Jane flung her arms around her friend and hugged tightly. Ahsoka was too skinny, she thought, all muscle and bone and teeth.

 

“You look… different,” Ahsoka said, with her characteristic tact, and added hastily: “Good different! Happy.”

 

“I am,” Jane said, and felt rather than saw Miss Fisher’s smile turn bright.

 

“Jane Ross,” said a deep, familiar voice, and Jane looked up to see Master Fisto’s face. He must have doubled back to say hello: Master Skywalker and Senator Amidala were still walking, apparently totally oblivious. “I’m glad to see you looking well.”  
  
“Thank you, Master,” Jane said. She’d always liked him; he was friendly, and had a sense of humour. “This is Miss Fisher, my guardian. I don’t know if you’ve met. Miss Fisher, this is Master Fisto, of the Jedi Council.”  


“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Miss Fisher said, smiling in that very particular way that suggested Jane might well cross paths with the smile’s object at breakfast time in the near future.

 

“Likewise,” Master Fisto said, looking between Jane and Miss Fisher and smiling, in a strange, surprised way. “Yes. I am very happy to see everything has turned out for the best.”

 


	13. they also serve (Beru/Owen/Obi-Wan)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> During the Battle of Endor, they wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For serceleste in my tumblr prompts. Will probably be written over later, but it's here now!

Neither Ben nor Beru nor Owen went to the Battle of Endor. It was too risky and they were too old.

 

“Old,” Owen snarled, “ _old_ , Forcedamnit, Rex is going and that crusty old fucker has twenty years on me, technically speaking -”

 

Beru, who never planned to go, and whose weapons certifications were only there because everyone in the Rebellion could lift and fire a blaster, folded her hands in her lap and said nothing. Owen paced and swore in the limited confines of the sitting room their combined ranks and Ben’s reputation had earned them, but that bothered her less than Ben, in the corner with his hands tucked into the sleeves of his robes, saying nothing.

 

“Promise me you won’t stow away,” she said.

 

“I’m not stupid!” Owen snapped.

 

“I wasn’t talking to you,” Beru said.

 

Owen stopped in his tracks and stared at Ben. “You wouldn’t,” he said, with conviction, and then looked at Beru, who did not take her eyes off Ben.

 

“Oh,” Owen said, with the resignation of a man who had raised a Skywalker to adulthood, “You would.” He dropped onto the broken-down sofa and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Tell me Rex isn’t helping you. I’ll murder the hairy bastard.”

 

“No you won’t,” Ben said, a little distantly and a little grimly. “You like him too much.”

 

“I’ll give him something to think about!”

 

“He could snap you in half, Owen, he’s still a clonetrooper.”

 

“Promise me,” Beru repeated, recognising that Ben had steered the conversation off-course with his habitual ease.

 

Ben caught her eye and smiled, slight and wry. “It’s Luke and Leia,” he said. “I can’t leave them to do this alone.”

 

Beru pressed her lips together very tightly. She knew what he meant. “They won’t be. They’ll have Han, and Chewbacca, and Rex, and half the Alliance’s finest.”

 

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Owen groused. The deepening lines on Ben’s face suggested he agreed.

 

“We let them go off to Tatooine and fight Jabba -” Beru began, her eyes locked with Ben’s.

 

“More like we couldn’t _stop_ them,” Owen grumbled.

 

“- we can’t stand in their way now.”

 

There was a brief silence, and then Ben said: “I promise.”

 

Beru blinked at last, and felt her eyes water. “Thank you,” she said.

 

Ben moved across the room and sat down on the sofa next to Owen, who flopped sideways with an irritable groan to let his head land in Ben’s lap.

 

“I still say this is a bad idea,” he said, and no-one answered. He shifted a bit to get comfortable, and then continued: “And are you sure you’re ready for what’ll happen if we really let the three of them loose?”

 

“What do you mean?” Beru went over to the sofa herself, and pushed Owen’s legs aside so she could sit down. He rested them over her lap again; she laid a hand on his thigh.

 

“Look at what happened on Tatooine.” Ben was tracing patterns on Owen’s scalp; he had his head tilted back and his eyes closed, like a lothcat in the sun. “They went to rescue one smuggler. And what did they do? Killed Jabba, overturned a system of government, helped out with a slave rebellion, discovered a new source of lightsaber crystals -”

 

“ _And_ rescued the smuggler,” Beru pointed out. “I don’t see how any of those are bad things.”

 

“They aren’t,” Owen said, “but my point is, they did them all _by_ _accident_. None of them were in the plan. So what are they going to do now?”

 

Beru looked at Ben, struck by this.

 

“Hmm,” Ben said, looking vaguely worried. “You have a point.”

 

“Of course I do,” Owen said, shifting to make himself more comfortable. “This is going to be a grade-A mess. I’m telling you now.”

 

***

 

Owen took some raw recruits in need of an attitude adjustment to the range and shouted at them. Ben went to join Mon Mothma and the rest of the Alliance’s High Command. Beru did in fact have work to do, and she did it, but she did it sitting in the back of the High Command’s situation room. She’d presented work to them a number of times over the last few years and had taken part in various committee meetings, mostly Hutt-related, so she didn’t stand out. In Beru’s experience, very few people paid attention to a middle-aged woman quietly getting on with something.

 

About halfway through, Ben went the colour of sour blue milk, and rose and left quietly. Nobody drew attention to it - things were tense enough and everyone was focused enough that a councillor’s temporary departure from the situation room didn’t register for more than an eyeblink, but Beru noticed and followed him, and whisked him into an unoccupied office. He reached out a wavering hand for a wall and slid down to collapse onto the floor the moment she did so.

 

Beru knelt down beside him, heart hammering in her throat. She hadn’t seen him look this bad since the day Luke came home with only one flesh hand.

 

“ _No_ ,” he moaned, very softly, “Luke, no, no, don’t, it’s too risky, _no_ -”

 

Beru took his hands, and found that they were freezing cold and clammy. His eyes were focused somewhere beyond her, in that strange, distant way that meant he was using the Force.

 

“Let him fight,” Beru said. “Let him make his choice. He’s a grown man. Ben, we can’t stop him -”

 

Ben blinked, and saw her again. “Vader,” he said, dread in his voice. “Beru, he’s handed himself over to Darth Vader.”

 

Beru’s thundering heart turned to still cold ice. She licked her lips and swallowed, trying to catch a solid breath, and couldn’t.

 

Minutes later, the first blows from Imperial laser cannon struck the Rebel fleet, and Beru’s comm lit up with Owen’s swearing. Beru turned on her location beacon.

 

“Come and find us,” she said. “If you run into anyone asking for Ben tell them Luke is using the Force and needs Ben’s guidance.”  
  
“He’s not listening to a kriffing _word_ I’m saying,” Ben muttered. Beru ignored him.

 

When the Death Star exploded and took the Emperor’s remains with it, neither Beru nor Owen were on the bridge to see it. The first they knew of victory was Ben, beginning both to cry and to laugh.

 

They separated themselves from the official celebrations after an hour. Beru suspected that a hazy bit of mind-tricking had been involved, and forgave Ben on the basis that she needed to know, at once, if Leia and Han were safe, and if Luke was going to need another new hand. Ben escaped last, and grabbed them each by a hand, moving swiftly through the corridors.

 

“This is the way to this quadrant’s hangar bay,” Owen said, very suspiciously.

  
“Naturally,” Ben said. “We’re going down to Endor.”

 

“That’s not authorised,” Beru said, which was not an objection.

 

Ben made a drawn-out and undignified noise which Beru had once suspected him of picking up from one of the younger Darklighter boys, but now knew was the kind of sound former clonetroopers made to express a complete unwillingness to give a shit.

 

“You _can’t fly_ ,” Owen said, more pertinently.

 

“I can fly,” Ben said. “Just not very well.”  


“If you crash us onto the moon,” Owen began.

 

“Trust in the Force,” Ben said serenely, and used it to hoick Owen into an unattended A-wing.

 

***

 

Such was Beru’s relationship with Rogue Squadron that, when an already fairly pissed Wedge Antilles caught sight of her, he tried to hide the booze behind his back.

 

Owen snorted. “She won’t bite you. Just tell us where Luke is, son.”

 

Wedge gave them rather confused directions, and - with the help of these and a small, extremely bloody and victorious-looking Ewok - they made their way through the thick forest and village walkways to find Luke, Leia and Han, standing around a pyre burning down to charcoal and watching it crumble to ash. All three turned when they heard Beru, Owen and Ben, which silhouetted them nicely against the light. They’d have looked very heroic if Han didn’t have a celebratory garland hanging off one ear, Luke wasn’t nursing a half-empty bottle of moonshine, and Leia’s hair didn’t resemble a birds’ nest.

 

Owen took a deep, shuddering breath, and then stopped. Beru squeezed his hand tightly, and received a crushing grip in return. She looked up, and found that Ben’s face was running with tears.

 

The kids were starting to look worried.

 

Beru let go of Owen’s hand gently, and opened her arms to all of them.

 

“Come here, you three,” she said. “We are _so_ proud of you.”

 


	14. she'll urge you to confide (resist) (Phryne/Jack)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack Robinson gives a press conference on Coruscant. Phryne's watching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For norcumi in the tumblr prompts thing I did. Title is from a Wendy Cope poem about journalists!

Jack had told himself a thousand times that the Jedi didn’t sink to public relations, but the longer the war dragged on, the weaker his protestations began. Far too often, he crossed paths with Anakin Skywalker trying to pretend he wasn’t ready to take a lightsaber to a fleet of producers and make-up artists rendering him respectable enough for a news short, and he had twice let Obi-Wan Kenobi off a misdemeanour fine for leaping out of a window and violating traffic laws in order to escape a journalist.

 

And then there was his own role.

 

“I’m sure it’s just that you close so many cases, master,” Hugh said loyally, brushing a non-existent speck of dust off Jack’s robes and ushering him towards the press conference. His Force presence was singing a cantata of relief that it wasn’t him in the hot seat, and Jack could hardly blame him. Hugh had been cornered by the press once. It had been a total disaster, and still occasionally appeared in the comedy shorts on _Comet_ or in listicles with titles like _Top 10 Panicked Yells of ‘Jedi Business’_.

 

“Hmm,” Jack said, glancing around the corner at the horde of reporters, holocamera lenses glinting and droid-borne microphones swarming.

 

Jack, however, was a thirty-eight-year-old adult Jedi Master with poise, confidence and a solid professional record. And the fact that he featured in articles like _Jack Robinson: 12 Times the Thirst was Real_ was not going to put him off delivering a confident and professional briefing to the Coruscanti Press Corps about a smuggling ring the Jedi had recently smashed.

 

“Trust in the Force,” Hugh said brightly, nodding sharply as if that would make the Force save him from imminent humiliation.

  
“Padawan,” Jack said, “the Force is not going to save me from a press conference.” He sighed. “I only wish it would.”

 

He straightened his bands, strode forward to the podium, and tried not to blink too hard at the sudden flash of lights and questions. The worst thing about all this was the way he’d got used to it.

 

His commlink buzzed almost imperceptibly against the fine skin of his wrist. Jack’s expression did not shift. He’d got used to that, too.

 

 

When he got back to the Temple, there was a large box of flowers outside Jack and Hugh’s rooms, and about fourteen messages on Jack’s commlink. Jack packed Hugh off to teach a class of handpicked younglings the basics of investigation, detailed a mild-mannered Nautolan youngling called Zatt to make sure his classmates didn’t torment Hugh too much, and then manhandled the box of flowers into his room.

 

They were beautiful, of course, and tasteful, and they were all from his home planet. Jack knew who they were from well before he found the small silvery card tucked into the bioprotective flowerstock at the bottom: _Phryne_ on one side, in elegant black writing, and _Superlative as always, Jack_ on the other.

 

Jack sighed, and put the caff pot on before checking his commlink. One of the messages was to do with Hugh’s upcoming assessments; another was a routine communiqué from Master Sinube. The other twelve were from Phryne, forwarding clips and segments of his recent appearance on the holonews, which she had apparently been critiquing live. Hopefully she’d only been sending the messages to him. Elizabeth Macmillan questioned him unusually closely whenever their paths crossed in the Halls of Healing, these days, and Master Stanley looked at him like something on the bottom of her shoe.

 

 _Thanks for the flowers_ , he wrote back, feeling that was safe.

 

_You’re always handsome, Jack, but you looked delectable today. What have you done with your hair?_

 

Jack rubbed a hand over his face, feeling a slow blush creep up the back of his neck. _I let Mel cut it,_ he replied, referring to the clone commander of the Coruscant Guard he worked with most often.

 

 _Jedi aren’t delectable_ , he added, rather feebly. _It’s against the Code_.

 

He could practically hear her laughing at him.

 

 _I thought the problem was all those layers_ , Phryne replied, quick as a whip. _You’d need a search party just to find your underwear._

 

 _The Code is very simple_ , Jack answered, clinging to sanity, _but if you think about it from a philosophical point of view_

 

He hit enter by accident, swore, and continued typing. He got as far as _I mean,_ before Phryne got her retaliation in first.

 

_But your outfits are incredibly complicated. Ta-ta, Jack, I have a very boring party to go to._

 

 _Night_ , he answered. _Enjoy yourself. Don’t break any laws or bring the Republic into disrepute._

  
_O ye of absolutely no faith at all_ , Phryne wrote, and sent a short, cycling clip of her winking and smiling.

 

Jack knew he ought to delete it, as the best and simplest way to deal with this kind of temptation.

 

He didn’t.


	15. or He will be answerable to me (Prudence Stanley, Anakin Skywalker)

The Council never saw Master Stanley coming. This was not the usual state of affairs: Master Stanley was about as easy to miss as an armed battle cruiser, and her visits to the Council were usually just as welcome. This time, however, the Council’s schedule had been unexpectedly cleared, a junior padawan without the spine to tell Master Stanley ‘no’ had been left alone to act as the Council’s clerk outside the doors, _and nobody had remembered to tell Prudence Stanley not to bring her report on the crèche to the morning’s meeting_.

 

Perhaps, if they had been paying attention to anything other than Anakin Skywalker, one of them might have noticed Master Stanley’s distinctive Force signature barrelling down the corridor, brushing aside the padawan with a crushing enquiry about whether they had managed to rid themselves of last month’s case of head lice, and overwhelming the guards through sheer force of personality.

 

They didn’t. The only thing they registered was the Skywalker boy’s deep fear, and the aura of unconscious power that hung around him, all the more alarming for the ease with which he bore it, not truly knowing that it was there.

 

“- trained, this boy cannot be,” Master Yoda said, with an air of firm decision. “Far too dangerous, he is.”

 

“But,” Qui-Gon said to Yoda, deep and reasonable, in preparation for a long speech.

 

“What’s going to happen to me?” whispered Anakin to Obi-Wan, almost too scared to get the words out.

 

Obi-Wan, who didn’t have a clue, squeezed his shoulder gently.

 

“ _HWAT_ ,” said Prudence Stanley, in a voice that could probably have been heard from the Senate, “is going on here?”

 

Qui-Gon twitched.

 

“Master Stanley,” Mace Windu said, in the voice of one whose tension headache had only just begun. “It’s always a pleasure, but as you can see, we’re a little preoccupied right now.”  


“You appear,” Master Stanley said, frostily, “to be preoccupied with frightening a _child_. Young Qui-Gon, what in the name of the galaxy have you done now?”

 

“It’s not my fault,” Qui-Gon protested automatically.

 

Obi-Wan bit the inside of his cheek and did not grin.  Master Stanley – bossy, political, imperious and incurably fond of children – was infamous for reducing any Jedi under fifty to a complaining youngling. Qui-Gon was no exception.

 

He really ought to be used to it by now, though.

 

“I stopped considering that a valid excuse after the _first_ time you abandoned your padawan in the middle of a civil war,” Master Stanley said, successfully looking down her nose at someone who was a good foot and a half taller than her. “Have you brought this young man to the Temple?”

 

“He is extremely strong with the Force, Master Stanley.”  
  
“That was a yes or no question, Master Qui-Gon, we have discussed your unbecomingly evasive behaviour before.”  
  
Qui-Gon twitched again, and Anakin pressed unobtrusively against Obi-Wan.

 

Obi-Wan squeezed his shoulder once more, trying to reassure him. Master Stanley was finicky and sharp, but kind, and he felt quite strongly that her arrival here was the best thing that could have happened to young Anakin.

 

Master Stanley finished shredding Qui-Gon, and turned a warm smile on Anakin, who returned it hesitantly.

 

“Now, young man, what is your name, and how old are you?”

 

“He is –“ began Master Windu.

 

“I _beg_ your pardon, Master Windu?”

 

Master Windu shut up.

 

Anakin swallowed hard, glanced around, and then spoke very quietly. “Anakin. My name’s Anakin Skywalker. And I’m nine.”  


“Are you?” Master Stanley sat down on the floor very slowly and gingerly, complaining about her old bones, and gestured to Anakin to sit next to her. “Good heavens, you’re very tall for nine. My name is Prudence, Anakin, I’m very pleased to meet you.”

 

Anakin looked up at Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan didn’t bother looking at Qui-Gon before smiling and nodding. Even Qui-Gon at his stubbornest wasn’t fool enough to refuse Master Stanley’s influence for the boy he wanted to train.

 

Anakin Skywalker hesitantly sat down near Master Stanley. “I thought you were a master. I mean, they called you… master.”

 

“I’m a Jedi master, Anakin,” Master Stanley said, with an air of gentle tutelage. “That’s a professional qualification. It means that I became a Jedi knight, and then I successfully trained a padawan like Obi-Wan here, who became a knight himself. Once Henry became a knight, I was qualified to be a Jedi master. It doesn’t mean I’m in charge of anything.”

 

Master Koon made a noise that caused both Master Stanley and Anakin to look at him.

 

“Excuse me,” Master Koon said, rather muffled. “My respirator. I sneezed.”  
  
_Yeah, right_ , Obi-Wan thought.

 

“Have your parents come to Coruscant with you, Anakin?” Master Stanley asked. “Did you have a long journey?”

 

Qui-Gon started to talk. Obi-Wan shifted his weight very slightly andtrod on his foot.

  
“Sorry, master,” he murmured, and absorbed the fishy look aimed at him with no guilt whatsoever.

 

“I don’t have a father,” Anakin said. “My mother’s a slave. On Tatooine. Like me, except I won a bet for Master Qui-Gon podracing, and that meant I got freed.”

 

“Podracing!” Master Stanley said, in a tone that suggested she would rather have shouted it, preferably into Qui-Gon’s ear from a distance of less than six inches. “How very exotic! So you have just been freed, Anakin?”  
  
Anakin nodded vigorously.

 

“Well, that is wonderful, isn’t it?” Master Stanley said, with a jolly smile that did not conceal from any Jedi present her profound desire to expel them all from the room by way of the windows, possibly excepting Obi-Wan for being a good kind boy. “We must make sure all your paperwork is properly in order and take care of your health.”  


“Um,” Anakin said. “Can you take my transmitter out?”  
  
“My dear boy, I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean.”  
  
“It’s… the masters – I mean the slave masters – they use them to stop people escaping, ’cause if they go too far, they’ll. Um.”

 

“Well?” Master Stanley said, very gently. She was deliberately exuding comfort and reassurance in the Force, the same way she did with the youngest children in the crèche.

 

“’splode,” Anakin mumbled, into his tunic.

 

“Explode? That wouldn’t be very nice at all, Anakin. The first thing we shall do is make sure that nasty thing is out of you. And then perhaps we’ll blow it up ourselves, so you can see it go bang – would you like that?”

 

“C’n I take it apart?” Anakin asked, very shyly. “I like mechanics ’n stuff.”

 

“Anakin is a very gifted mechanic,” Obi-Wan said, feeling he was the only adult Jedi besides Master Stanley who could currently open their mouth in safety. “He has already made a protocol droid from scratch out of spare parts.”  
  
“That’s very impressive, Anakin,” said Master Stanley. “Of course you may take the transmitter apart. But perhaps we will remove the explosives first.”

 

Anakin gave her a real smile.

 

“And you must tell me more about where you’re from,” Master Stanley continued. “Tatooine! How exciting. I’ve never been out of the Mid Rim myself, but I have a niece – dreadful girl really, Phryne, shocking manners, but she does have a wonderful instinct for helping people – who has been as far as _Ryloth_.”

 

Obi-Wan thought about Phryne Fisher, and mentally shortened the odds on Shmi Skywalker being rescued from Tatooine and found a nice, reasonable job somewhere in the Fisher household within the month.

 

“I always wanted to see the stars,” Anakin said wistfully.

 

“I’m sure you will,” Master Stanley assured him. “A bright boy like you. Now, let me introduce you to young Analiese, who’s a padawan here, and she will take you down to the Halls of Healing so we can just check you’re all right.” Anakin looked a little alarmed. “Not to worry, the doctors are all very nice. And I will be with you shortly. If you ask anyone to bring me, I will come down at once.”

 

“Thank you, Prudence,” Anakin said politely, and was duly introduced to the rather shaken clerk outside the doors and ushered off to the Halls of Healing.

 

The moment the doors swung shut, Master Stanley turned on the Council with a scowl that could have stripped graffiti, sent the risen dead back to their graves, and shamed any number of devils.

 

“Now,” she said, deceptively evenly, “I think it best if Anakin is with people he has grown to trust as much as possible, seeing as he is very young and very traumatised. So we have only five minutes to discuss this.”

 

“Master Stanley,” Master Yoda began.

 

“I beg your pardon,” Master Stanley said icily. “I was not finished.”

 

Qui-Gon let out a sigh. Master Koon 'sneezed' again, and did not bother to apologise.

 

Obi-Wan wiped the grin off his face and fixed his eyes on the distant Senate buildings, emptying his mind of all conscious thought and his body of all tell-tale movement – whilst sparing a few brain cells to take notes of whatever Master Stanley was about to say next.

 

This was going to be _good_.


	16. jewel set in a silver sea (Cassian Andor, Bail Organa, Abhorsen)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lord Bail Organa rides to Belisaere with a young Cassian Andor in tow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of my Old Kingdom AU, at incognitajones' request. If you're imagining Bail dressed as Big Bird dancing while Breha loses her shit, you're doing it right. ;)

Cassian Andor is twelve years old and he’s never felt more important in his life.

 

He’s never been very important, this is true. He was a son to his parents, presumably, a brother to any sisters he may have had, and that’s important: but it’s important to just one family and he doesn’t remember it very well. Since the Organas took him, he’s done any task he can between the lessons and training the Organas have kindly given him, but that doesn’t matter so much either – even if he wins plenty of praise from his teachers and the Organas themselves. But now he’s old enough to ride to Belisaere with Lord Bail for the Midwinter sitting of the Gamot, where he can really be useful. And if he’s useful to the Organas, he can help them help everyone in Alderaan, everyone in the Kingdom’s rich, vulnerable North.

 

Lord Bail asked for him _personally_. The thought makes Cassian sit up a little straighter on his pony, even though he is unaccustomed to riding for such a long period of time and he aches. But up ahead he can see the city: Belisaere, the jewel of the Kingdom, all white buildings and red roofs and gleaming aqueducts under the sharp early winter sun.

 

He can’t help a little intake of breath, and Lord Bail riding beside him (riding rather slowly, an adult Cassian will later realise, to make his young protégé comfortable) smiles. “It’s a very striking sight, isn’t it, Cassian? You’ve never been to Belisaere before, I think.”  


“No,” Cassian breathes, and then adds hastily “my lord.”

 

There are _two hundred thousand_ spirits in Belisaere. Cassian has imagined it, but imagining isn’t the same as seeing its sheer size, the people streaming towards its well-guarded walls, knowing that within those walls are the Great Charter Stones, the Palace, the Gamot itself...

 

Cassian’s hands are slack on his reins. Luckily the pony is a placid one.

 

“It’s a remarkable place,” Lord Bail says. “We’ll have to do a little sight-seeing. Especially given that we’ll be here just long enough for the Festival, thanks to Lord Farr’s schedule.”

 

Cassian panics a bit. “Lord Bail, I’m here to work, I don’t need – I’m not –“

 

“Cassian,” Lord Bail says gently, “I didn’t just bring you here to work. I brought you here to see Belisaere.”

 

“Why?” Cassian asks, baffled, forgetting his courtesies momentarily. “I’m just a page, my lord, it’s not…”

 

Lord Bail waits him out, and then says: “Sometimes I think we wronged you by not adopting you, Cassian.”  


Cassian has nothing to say to that. The Organas did adopt a baby girl a few years ago, under circumstances he didn’t fully understand – that nobody did. Queen Padmé’s sudden death while pregnant with the heir to the Old Kingdom put Lord Bail and Lady Breha’s long-awaited child at the bottom of the list of mysteries. Cassian had never asked himself why they hadn’t chosen to adopt him six years ago, instead of little Leia.

 

“We thought we would be able to find your parents,” Lord Bail continued. “Or an aunt or uncle, at least. But we couldn’t, which is why your fostering has become permanent.”

 

He fell silent for a moment, then continued.

  
“You’re our ward, Cassian. Yes, you will work as my page – as any well-born boy of your age might be expected to do, incidentally, so don’t let any of the others at the Gamot treat you as less than an equal – but you’ll also learn. You’re very sharp, Cassian, you learn fast, you’re a gifted Charter mage even at twelve, and you have integrity. The Kingdom needs young people like you more than ever now. So you’re here to learn. But you’re also here to see the Kingdom that needs you, and think about how best you can help it one day.”

 

Cassian tries to grapple with this. It’s too big for his hands.

 

“Breha also insisted I take you to the Festival to see the Spring Dance,” Lord Bail continues. “But I think she’s just nostalgic for the time I had to play the Bird of Dawning and she laughed at me all the way down the parade.”

 

Cassian blinks at that mental image.

 

“It was exactly as bad as you think,” Lord Bail assures him. “It wasn’t the stilts I objected to so much as the costume. Yellow feathers, Cassian.”  
  
Cassian lets out a giggle, and then claps a hand over his mouth before it can get any further.

 

Lord Bail smiles like that’s a victory.


End file.
